


Whisper Through the Din

by HyperLittleNori (Shiguresan)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Derek Hale Deserves Nice Things, Full Shift Werewolves, Hurt/Comfort, Injured Stiles Stilinski, Injury Recovery, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Season/Series 06, Self-Acceptance, Symptoms of tinnitus, Wolf Derek Hale, hard of hearing character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:34:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28839438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiguresan/pseuds/HyperLittleNori
Summary: He wasn’t good at knowing the best thing to say, knowing how to comfort someone. He never had been. That had always been his mom or Laura.He thought of them then, of his mom’s warm eyes and Laura’s thoughtful expression. He remembered that night she’d tucked him into the Camaro, smoke still clinging to their hair and clothes, remembered what she’d said and he thought those words would stick with him until the day he died.He watched Stiles for a long heartbeat; his own head slightly cocked as he listened to Stiles’s heart simmer back from the enraged crescendo it’d worked itself into. When it settled back to something sad and steady, like the vibration on a string instrument, Derek offered an uncertain echo of Laura’s words. “We’ll work this out, Stiles.”
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 25
Kudos: 113





	1. Prologue & Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> For the lovely and patient Miranda H! Better late than never (I hope)! You requested this what feels like a lifetime ago. The world has literally changed so much since you asked for this but I hope you still enjoy it and it brings you some joy in these strange times. You asked for: ‘Wolf Derek! Derek! Rescuing! Stray! Animals! (Or hurt wild ones) - BOTTOM DEREK.’ I am so nervous. This is a slightly different writing style for me that just felt right for the story, so I hope you and everyone else still enjoy it. 
> 
> Warning for: mentions of a bomb in a storage facility, explosions, injuries and hearing impairments as a result of injury. There are also some animals recovering from injuries but we don’t go into detail on any of the animals’ injuries and none of them die. This story is more about the comfort than the hurt.
> 
> Set roughly eight years after the show ends. 
> 
> Touches on depression at the start so might trigger some. But largely this story is about hope and recovery.
> 
> For the first time ever I also have a beta reader! Thank you so much Jess for your assistance and reassurance with this one. It gave me the courage to post.

**Whisper Through the Din**

Prologue

The whole world was still, dark and so quiet that Stiles’s steady breathing felt too loud in his ears. He scanned the darkness again, only very briefly wondering what ‘were-vision’ might be able to pick up. The funny thing about his erratic concentration was that with certain things, he could have laser like focus. He was sure that’s what made him so good at this, why he’d excelled far quicker than any of his fellow graduates, why he was co-leader on this mission. Why people already requested to work with him to help with their cases. He was the best of his class and probably the few classes before it too.

He side-stepped around the building and carefully checked the side door before breaking out the bolt cutters. “No sign of movement. Parameter secure? Over,” he asked quietly into the radio at his chest. 

“Confirmed, perimeter secure.” The voice of his colleague came back.

Stiles nodded, inhaling a deep breath which he let go slowly. “Confirmed, heading in.”

He had brought bolt cutters and other more subtle tools but it turned out it wasn’t necessary. He pushed the door and it gave way easily. He froze at just how easy it was. “Yellow light, guys, something isn’t right here,” he said, edging into the slight gap of the door enough to see inside as discreetly as possible.

The warehouse was stacked with boxes, but they had guys on the roof who could see down into it so he knew no one was hiding behind any of them. Of course the heat sensors would’ve also picked up any human life, but he’d encountered many things back in Beacon Hills that wouldn’t have shown up using that technology. He had to be cautious, especially as the only guy on the team who knew about all the possible, if unlikely, supernatural entities that could be lurking around a suspected drug cartel’s key storage facility.

He could count on one hand the times he’d actually come across something supernatural in his cases as a fully qualified agent, but there was a first time for everything.

“Proceed with caution, but the search window is closing,” came his superior’s voice over the radio. “Decoy is a limited time only.”

Stiles set his jaw. He knew how hard it’d been to clear this area, how coincidental it’d been that one of the guys heading security for the cartel had been caught for tax evasion and had tried to talk himself out of it by spilling like a cheap stemmed glass. They wouldn’t have this chance again.

“Copy that, moving with caution,” he confirmed. Checking for obvious trips, he sidled into the room, his two team-mates on task with him close behind. Without budging the door open another inch, they edged further in after Stiles. They had to secure the area for the rest of the team to move in and work their magic. That’s all he had to do. Sweep the area like he’d done almost a hundred times before. 

So why was he filled with this sense of foreboding?

Slowly, he circled the aisles of boxes, just in case, double checking the blind spots from the windows with the other two. Just as he moved around the last stack, his colleagues swept back around to the door and Stiles froze at the faint glow coming from behind one of the stacks. Swallowing, he ducked down, enough to see without touching any of the boxes and his blood ran cold.

“Clear the area.” He managed shakily, then louder, more frantically, “Clear the area! There’s a bomb! Move, move, move!” 

Everything erupted into chaos. His radio was alive with noise he couldn’t process as he scrambled towards the door his colleagues vanished through, wrenching it wide open as he did so. He felt like he was in one of those dreams, with adrenaline rushing through his veins, with the world rushing away from him and his legs working like mad but not carrying him fast enough.

Nowhere near fast enough.

The night burst outward from behind him into a screaming eruption of fire. The force of the wall blowing out sent him hurtling through the air until he landed hard on his side, head cracking against the concrete in the aftershocks. Pain exploded through his shoulder, his back felt like it was on fire, flayed open and raw as he rolled onto it but he couldn’t move. A high-pitched howl isolated him in a hurricane that devoured everything. He could only lay there, twitching limply as his vision swam, as his skull pounded with agony. A high and constant ringing consumed everything as the world went black.

The ringing never stopped. 

* * *

Chapter One

Perranwell Bay was an odd little place a few hours from Beacon Hills. It was a big territory but never had a lot going on. It was mostly a tourist attraction to hikers, fishing enthusiasts or fans of nature in general. The hospital that served the harbour in the next town over though was more in their territory and so it had taken Derek no time at all to respond to Sheriff Stilinski’s call.

When he reached the front desk of the ward Stiles was on, the nurse recognised him from when she’d brought in the baby fox that’d been abandoned in her front yard. She smiled warmly at him as he entered and he knew the smile he offered in return (as he assured her the kit was doing fine) was what got him onto the ward, even though it wasn’t visiting hours. 

The sterile smell of hospital, the staleness of illness and the sharp, metallic tint of pain in the air made his head spin. He breathed subtly through his mouth as he followed his ears to the room where Sheriff Stilinski was talking to a doctor and Stiles.

The unnatural sound of Stiles’s silence put him more on edge than the pain or misery that chemosignals carried to him. He frowned, wanting to go back to the waiting room, but as he hesitated in the hallway, he heard it all through the closed door regardless.

“…stitches to the lacerations on his back are healing well. We got his dislocated shoulder set back in the socket nicely and I’ve written your son a prescription for painkillers to help with both. I’ve given him some exercises for the shoulder to do at home, right Mr Stilinski?”

Stiles didn’t answer and the Sheriff gave a deep sigh.

“And you really can’t give us any sort of... _anything_ for his hearing?” 

The doctor hesitated. “I’ve prescribed something for the migraines, if they persist. But for now, the best thing your son can do is rest. I’ve discharged you to a specialist clinic that operates in another part of the hospital on an outpatient basis. They can work with him, but I’ve already spoken with your son about managing his expectations when it comes to recovery. It is a very common side-effect of this kind of injury. It could fade with time, but we won’t know much more for a few weeks…”

After the chaos that had torn through Beacon Hills a few years ago, with Monroe and Gerard’s vigilante group, Derek had left Sheriff Stilinski with his number just in case. But he’d hoped the Sheriff wouldn’t have to use it for anything more than checking in.

They both touched base now and then with a text or a phone call, just like Derek did with Scott, Cora and even Stiles himself. It was mostly to feel him out about possible supernatural angles to leads he was chasing or to keep him updated on anything passing through the territory. It’d become so part of his normal routine that the sight of the Sheriff’s name on his phone hadn’t rung any alarm bells. That was, until he’d heard his voice.

Stiles had been in an accident, he’d said in that shaky, barely held together voice. He’d told him he’d been taken to the hospital near Derek, and asked if he knew a place he could stay while Stiles was in there. Derek had offered him his spare room and here he was now, picking them both up. He felt out of place and helpless, two things he’d strived _not_ to be since he left Beacon Hills behind him.

Eventually the door opened. The doctor gave him a disapproving look when he nearly bumped into him. Before he could call security or worse, the Sheriff stepped in. “It’s all good, Doc, he’s a close friend of the family. We’re staying with him until, well…”

As the Sheriff’s voice trailed off, Derek noticed that Stiles wasn’t looking at any of them. His gaze was focussed on a slim folder on the side console, distant, closed off. It was such a startling contrast to the guy that frequently drunk texted him or called him to relay information about the few supernaturals he came across in his cases, that Derek was frozen by the sight of him for a moment.

Stiles had changed so much since the day Derek had first laid eyes on him, he’d grown a lot and yet Derek had never seen him look so small.

Then he realised that not only was Stiles not paying attention, he wasn’t hearing them either.

“Stiles?” the Sheriff called, a little louder, stepping sideways to get his son’s attention. Stiles’s gaze snapped to him, brow furrowed.

“I’m gonna go collect your meds from the dispensary downstairs. Then Derek can drive us back to his place, yeah?” 

The Sheriff gestured to Derek as he spoke. Stiles stared at Derek for a moment, then shrugged, wincing slightly at even that tiny motion.

“Sure. Great.”

So he’d heard okay then – once he’d been looking at his dad properly, Derek thought. The Sheriff looked weary and at the end of his rope as he followed the doctor out into the hall. 

Stiles’s silence was so disturbing that Derek felt a frisson of unease squirm in his stomach. He hesitated a moment, or two, or three, then took the seat the Sheriff had vacated, right in front of Stiles. But as he did so, he couldn’t help but notice the heading on the official document perched atop the folder. 

He felt his unease simmer into a steady, slow burning rage.

“They _fired_ you? They can’t do that.”

Stiles scoffed. He’d heard Derek then too. So what exactly was it with his hearing?

“Forced temporary leave from duty. Or whatever bullshit title they gave it. Pending a physical, I may be able to go back in an advisory capacity, a conciliatory desk position or whatever pasture they can shove me into to avoid saying the words we all know they want to say.”

Derek watched Stiles scowl at the folder, sounding as if he were treading the border of hysteria and rage as he pressed on. “Oh, but they _assure_ me I have good insurance with them. I can be comfortable while I decide what I’m going to do now that my career I worked my ass off for has been flushed down the toilet.”

“Stiles,” Derek began, but Stiles’s eyes blazed.

“I’m not gonna be a desk jockey for them godammit!” He swiped angrily at the folder, sending the official documents scattering to the floor. A grunt of pain was caught behind his lips and his free hand flew to his shoulder, which he held onto. Even through gritted teeth, he stared Derek down like a seething beast. 

“I was good at my job, Derek. I wasn’t a human in a werewolf pack or the sheriff’s kid. I was an agent. I was the best of my class, _better_ than that. I was the kind of man my dad could be proud of, I proved myself and more and now that’s all gone.”

Derek remembered the resourceful, tenacious teenager, still an intern that’d talked his way onto the squad that’d pursued _him_ around eight years ago now. He remembered the way he’d moved, the way he’d worked even then. More than that, he remembered the light in Stiles’s eyes. Now that light had been snuffed out and Stiles looked more lost than Derek had ever seen him. 

He wasn’t good at knowing the best thing to say, knowing how to comfort someone. He never had been. That had always been his mom or Laura.

He thought of them then, of his mom’s warm eyes and Laura’s thoughtful expression. He remembered that night she’d tucked him into the Camaro, smoke still clinging to their hair and clothes, remembered what she’d said and he thought those words would stick with him until the day he died.

He watched Stiles for a long heartbeat; his own head slightly cocked as he listened to Stiles’s heart simmer back from the enraged crescendo it’d worked itself into. When it settled back to something sad and steady, like the vibration on a string instrument, Derek offered an uncertain echo of Laura’s words. “We’ll work this out, Stiles.” 

Stiles just stared at him, as if he didn’t quite believe it. Even though he still had his dad, he was like Derek in that he’d often had to look out for himself, for one reason or another. He was self-sufficient and proud in the same way Derek was. He didn’t rely on others. Hell, he’d spent his childhood trying to take care of his dad as well as himself. If anyone understood the need to prove you could overcome something yourself, then it was him. But he had a few years on Stiles of learning when that determination sometimes became more self-destructive and he wasn’t going to stand by and watch Stiles tear himself apart. 

“We’ll work this out,” he said again, with more conviction this time. Stiles looked startled by his insistence, as if seeing something he hadn’t expected. 

*

Despite having kept in contact over the years, Stiles had never seen Derek’s house. It was a tribute to the low place he’d found himself in, that he couldn’t even bring himself to really study the single-story grey wood craftsman house with the sprawling porch amid the trees, or even nose in the cupboards of the guest-room’s ensuite.

He didn’t care enough to look, not even to be polite. He just felt numb. Emotionally numb anyway, because the painkillers that numbed the pain in his body were most decidedly wearing off and he felt the twenty-minute drive from the hospital as if his back had been flayed open and his skull caved in.

Stiles wasn’t even entirely sure how he’d even gotten from the car to the house. All he knew was, his dad had pushed his next scheduled medication into his hand as he’d curled onto his side on the neat, freshly made guest bed while Derek stood awkwardly on the threshold, looking as lost as Stiles felt. 

That was how the days passed for a while, in a haze of drugs and pain and that all-consuming screeching in his ears that sang loud and clear over everything. He couldn’t talk to his dad or Derek, he couldn’t watch TV. The deafening ringing in his ears that had risen with the explosion and never gone away, it consumed everything. Except, of course, when the migraines reared their hideous wrath, _that_ pain was all-consuming. It felt like he’d rather someone cut open his skull and tear out every nerve inside rather than feel it any longer, the pain that rendered him a useless, foetal mess.

When he didn’t get up to piss or let his dad check his dressings on his back, he lay on his side on the ridiculous queen bed and stared up at the full height ceiling. Its crisp cream eaves and honey-coloured beams made him feel like he was in some sort of ethereal dream or trapped in some sort of limbo where nothing made sense, where time carried no meaning – no way forward and no way back.

He isolated himself under the guise of ‘resting’ and apart from his dad bringing meals for him, or the odd visit to the useless clinic at the hospital, he was left to his own devices.

In the evenings, when the house fell quiet, Stiles swore he could hear the murmurs of Derek and his father talking out in the living room, watching TV or something, he guessed. The constant whine in his ears devoured anything more than the abstract mumbling sounds and vibrations of voices though, so that it felt like he was listening underwater and the worst part was, he didn’t even care to try and distinguish it. 

What was the point?

*

The hospital always left him feeling drained. He didn’t have the best feelings associated with hospitals anyway, not with memories of his mom and his own experiences during the time of the Nogitsune so prominent in his mind. His back had mostly healed but it still twinged and throbbed even in the relatively short car ride, as did his neck and head. It just felt like a lot of trouble and stress for little or no progress.

_“Now that your back has almost healed, I’d like you to try some physiotherapy for your shoulder and neck if we can. It’ll likely make things worse for a time, but we’ve seen such great progress in others…”_

Worse? He didn’t think things could get much worse. Last night’s migraine had left him lethargic and giddy, tender in all the wrong ways and places. 

When his dad pulled up behind Derek’s pick-up truck, he killed the engine and turned to face Stiles with a hesitant expression. He didn’t look guarded, not exactly anyway, more like lost, like he so desperately wanted to help but wasn’t sure how.

“The station called while you were in the clinic,” he began, eyes pinching a little as if the thought hurt. His voice was muffled and fuzzy through the ringing in Stiles’s head, but close like this, when Stiles could see his mouth forming the words, it made it easier to piece together the little sounds that he couldn’t quite pick up, the lost noises that sometimes made the words incomplete. Close like this though, without any interfering background noise to confuse things further, Stiles had heard and he’d understood.

Stiles swallowed. “It’s okay Dad.” Because in his adolescence, maybe they’d kept things from each other, maybe they’d both tried to remain strong for the other but over the years they’d established a raw honesty that’d made them stronger than ever. “You gotta do what you gotta do.”

“Stiles,” his dad reached forward, squeezing his hand in lieu of Stiles’s tender shoulder. “You’re all that matters for me, I can’t–”

“You can,” Stiles said firmly. “And you have to.” Rolling his right shoulder, the source of most of the discomfort in his back and neck, Stiles turned his eyes back to the house. “This…this is it for me Dad, for a while at least. It’s not going to get better overnight. You have to get back to work.” 

He didn’t have to be a werewolf to sense his father’s pain, his helplessness at the situation. Some days, Stiles thought it was worse for his dad than him. His dad, who had already watched his wife change and wither under a different illness.

Stiles wasn’t an idiot, he knew that depression was sucking him down deeper and deeper every day. He just hadn’t realised how potent the affliction could be until he’d felt it himself.

“I can’t leave yet,” the thought of stepping foot in Beacon Hills as this broken shell was too much to bear. “And you can’t stay here with me, waiting for something that may not happen for a long time.”

If ever.

Besides, as everyone kept telling him, the specialists for his recovery were here, not on Beacon Hills. For all the good they were doing him.

“I want to.” Even tinny, distant and muffled as his dad’s voice was, looking at his pained expression, Stiles understood the words perfectly.

“I know, Pops.” He squeezed his dad’s hand.

*

In the wake of his dad’s departure, he felt much the same. He stayed in what was rapidly becoming his room and since he had no bandages that needed redressing any longer, he only saw Derek on the occasion that he stuck his head round Stiles’s door to ask if he wanted some of whatever he’d made. Stiles always declined, waiting until he was sure Derek was out working before helping himself to basic water and toast or cereal when he could be bothered. 

Whether it was because he didn’t know what to do or because he knew Stiles wanted his solitude, Derek didn’t press him, didn’t impose himself on him out of a sense of duty. Stiles barely saw him at all as the utter devastation of life as he knew it enshrouded him in a bleak storm, dragging him into a lonely, dark place that he couldn’t find the will to drag himself out of.

*

Derek hadn’t endured exactly what Stiles was going through, but he had enough experience in how he was feeling to know how much solitude was needed and how far to push it. But he didn’t cater to Stiles either. He made meals, told Stiles if he wanted it he had to come out and get it. By day three of Sheriff Stilinski’s absence, he’d noticed the leftovers hadn’t been touched but at least the cereal and water from the filtered jug in the fridge was going down.

He remembered dodging Laura’s company the first few months they’d lived in New York, remembered the makeshift den he made in his bedroom of their apartment and how it made things both simpler and worse isolating himself there. And although it still hurt to think of Laura, of his parents, it felt good too. If he could go back and tell his younger self that one day the pain would be nothing more than a dull ache, like a bruise that only throbbed when pressed, that he’d be able to remember the good things first, rather than the bad, he knew exactly what he would’ve said though. So he didn’t give Stiles the ‘it gets better’ pep talk. He didn’t do much more than live his life the way he’d been doing before Stiles took up residence in his spare room.

It was the best he could do for now.

The night was cool, a sign of winter chasing the last edges of autumn away so that even Derek pulled the zipper of his jacket up tight as he did his last check of the enclosures and the property boundaries before heading back to the house. 

He went through the back door into the kitchen, frowning at the staleness of Stiles’s scent. He hadn’t been out since that morning. Still troubled, he opened the door to the inside boarding room. It was unusually (but thankfully) empty for the time of year, housed by only the cat he’d offered to foster from the vets while she fully recovered from the operation she’d had when she’d been hit by a car, and of course his latest and currently most demanding charge.

He didn’t really speak to the animals, talking wasn’t particularly his go-to, he mostly sort of hummed in a non-melodic, conversational sort of way. On the opposite side of the room to the cat, the little fox cub squeaked from his case. Derek made a rumbling sound in his throat of reassurance, before turning to prepare the formula. The little guy didn’t eat a lot but he ate often and was proving himself a time-consuming challenge.

Derek checked him over, his vitals and movements, even his snuffling breaths as he drip-fed him from the pipette before wrapping him back up in his blanket.

He had just tucked him back in and set the timer on his phone again for the next feeding when he heard it. 

Muffled, shuddering sobs, rough right through and inaudible to anyone who wasn’t always half-monitoring his surroundings.

A hot rush of wrongness flooded him, a feeling of guilt and wrongness at witnessing something Stiles would never share with him willingly. He froze, fingers still covering the tiny fox in its blanket, caught by his own senses, an unwilling voyeur to Stiles’s pain. He recovered himself enough to shut the cage and wash his hands, resolving to leave Stiles to his privacy.

But then he smelled it. The bitter tang of pain that swelled into insurmountable anguish and sent him bolting from the room, across the kitchen and down the hall. 

His heart pounded in his chest as he pushed open Stiles’s door, only to find him doubled over on his bed in an almost foetal position except he was face down, hands clasped around his head and squeezing white-knuckled, as if he were trying to cave in his own skull. As if that awkward position, rocking with pressure against his head, was the only one in which he didn’t feel as if he wanted to die.

Derek hesitated only a moment, a moment in which Stiles didn’t even seem to register his approach. The room was dark, so Derek let the bedroom door fall shut behind him to keep out the light from the hall. He reached forward instinctively to cup the back of Stiles’s neck where he was blazing hot and clammy and practically throbbing with agony.

It was a gentle touch but the pressure seemed to instantly burst through the raging nerves in Stiles’s body, making him sag, melt as the pain siphoned slowly up Derek’s arm, like a balloon slowly having the helium let out of it. He crumpled with relief, splayed out on his belly half-unconscious, wiped out from the pain as it faded. His breath came out in even pants through his parted lips, all muffled in the small space between the pillow and his chest that the awkward angle of the pillow had created.

Derek’s brow furrowed at the level of pain. He’d heard about migraines, of course, known they had the ability to completely incapacitate at their worst, but he’d never known exactly how much pain a human could take without passing out. 

It was the type of pain that made it worse, he supposed, long and never-ending and focussed right where your nerve endings made you what you were. Swelling to the point you couldn’t even think. He took it all, more than he would’ve usually liked, as taking all pain could leave the person with a dangerous sense of invincibility, but by the way Stiles rolled onto his back to stare up at him, dazed and almost gone with relief, he couldn’t find it in himself to regret it.

“Are you alright?” Derek asked after the silence had lain between them for some time.

Stiles exhaled but didn’t dare move, didn’t even open his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah I…that was the…I mean it’s been bad but that was…” He licked his dry lips and Derek wondered if he should offer him a drink, but as he began to rise off the bed, one of Stiles’s splayed arms grabbed for his wrist.

“No,” he groaned, forcing his eyes open to stare at the shape of Derek in the darkness. Through it, Derek’s keener eyes picked up his pallor, his exhaustion but also his eyes, still as relentless as ever. “Don’t go. The quiet…the quiet makes it worse.”

Derek hesitated, but found himself sinking back to his seat at the edge of the bed. No sooner had he sat, than Stiles’s arm fell away from him limply. After no time at all, his breathing shifted, drifting toward exhausted sleep. Derek watched him for a long time, watching every line on his face smooth out, every hint of bitter discomfort dissipate from the air as Stiles seemed to fall into the first restful sleep he’d had in weeks. He was splayed out artlessly, oblivious to the world and naively carefree like that day in the woods when Derek had returned to Beacon Hills after Laura had died. 

They’d both changed since that day.

Derek could only remember the anger that’d driven him back then like a distant memory but still, he marvelled at the calmness that spread through him as he listened to Stiles’s breathing even out. He didn’t even realise he’d drifted off himself until he woke slumped on his side across the bottom half of the bed, the early morning light sneaking around the edges of the blinds as Stiles edged off the opposite side of the bed.

Pretending to sleep, Derek watched his movements, as weak as a newborn kitten’s, toward the door that led out onto the porch that wrapped around most of the house. Stiles’s phone was vibrating in his hand as he fumbled it to his ear.

“Dad,” he said softly, voice husky and raw. Likely in hopes he wouldn’t wake Derek. 

_“Hey kiddo, are you okay?”_

It was a bit late for a social call and Derek could hear the worry in the Sheriff’s voice.

“Yeah,” Stiles murmured softly, “I’m fine dad. I didn’t want to worry you, it’s just I knew you’d be working and I woke up and…” He swallowed, fidgeting his bare toes on the cold wood of the porch. Even with his back to Derek, Derek could see his breath coming out in little furls of mist in the early morning blue.

“Just…thanks for everything dad, I…I’m gonna be okay, yeah? Just…”

_“Stiles, you’re scaring me, son. Do you need me? I can be there in a few hours–”_

“No. No, stay home, dad. Get some rest, drive back up on your off-shift like you planned. I’m really okay.”

There was a long silence, during which Derek wondered if their line had gotten disconnected but then the Sheriff gave the same kind of rough, exasperated and yet fondly concerned exhalation that Stiles might give. _“Are you sure? It’s no trouble, Stiles. The whole station has my back–”_

“Really dad,” Stiles said, a smile shaping his words a little. “I’m fine. Derek’s here. I’ll be alright.”

Derek felt something in his chest tighten at those words, at the obvious, carefree delivery of them. No one had ever said those two words as a confirmation that his presence was a source of relief and joy. No one had ever implied they felt safe with him.

*

A while later, with a clearer morning blooming outside the blinds, Derek awoke again to find Stiles sprawled out on his belly beside him, deep in sleep. Derek had no trouble edging off the bed and heading out the door, shutting it carefully and quietly behind him.

After a quick shower and an almost as speedy breakfast, he headed into the boarding room to check over his ‘patients’, smirking at the kit that was fussing for more milk. A low, reassuring hum rumbled in his throat as he prepared the special formula, wondering if his internal clock that’d woken him in time for the next feed was something he’d be able to shift out of once the kit was old enough to not need them.

He settled into the chair in the corner, a comfy, worn leather thing that he’d fed many furry orphans from and kept the kit wrapped in the blanket against his knees as he fed it. Brow tight with concentration, he let thoughts of Stiles simmer uneasily at the edges of his mind as he concentrated on checking over tiny paws and fur and eyes. 

Before the kit had quite finished, however, Derek sensed movement and looked up just as a knock sounded.

“Come in, Stiles.”

Stiles poked his head round looking almost sheepish until he caught sight of Derek with a little start, as if the sight he’d found hadn’t been what he’d expected.

“Dude, I know you take in animals and I know I’ve ribbed you about cuddling baby racoons and stuff but I never really imagined…” His sleep-rough voice trailed off, eyes blinking in owlish confusion. He stepped further into the room, his bleary, sleepy expression clearing rapidly as he closed the door behind him. He watched the baby fox guzzle the droplets greedily before lifting his gaze to meet Derek’s. He flushed, as if he’d been caught staring and cleared his throat awkwardly as he came to crouch beside him.

The position didn’t seem to pain him, which Derek thought was promising, even if he seemed a little awkward.

“I…can I…?” Stiles asked, eyes lifting to Derek’s face. Derek assumed, from what little he’d seen of Stiles’s interaction with his dad, that he was watching his mouth to make his reply easier to hear through the fog of ringing in his ears, but that didn’t make it feel any less…intimate.

Derek nodded, not trusting his voice and Stiles slowly reached forward to stroke one fingertip over the fox’s tiny head. It wriggled and sucked more heartily on the specialist bottle Derek held and Stiles let out a small, exhalation of a laugh that was all soft and breathy and shaped with a minute smile. His eyes danced with amazement and Derek’s chest fluttered in a way he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

“He’s amazing. Is he…uh…orphaned?”

“One of the admins at the hospital found him abandoned in her yard. She brought him to me. A lot of people all over the area bring animals here.” He glanced up when Stiles didn’t reply and found him frowning. “What?”

Stiles opened his mouth but then looked away. “Doesn’t matter.”

Derek picked up the way his muscles tensed, as if to rise, as if the moment just then hadn’t passed at all. “It does.” He said, bluntly, clearly, summoning Stiles’s gaze back to him. “Tell me.”

Those eyes, the darkest, richest mahogany in the dim, calming light of the room studied him for a long time before Stiles spoke.

“I…It’s the noise, it’s…it’s constant. It’s like I’m hearing everything under water and through a constant screeching hum and when people mumble or shout or enunciate it for me like I’m slow or whatever I can’t hear them properly.” He looked frustrated and as embittered as he’d looked when Derek had first laid eyes on him in the hospital after his injury. But more than that he looked…ashamed. 

Derek scowled. “So tell me to repeat myself,” he said, clearly, concisely, and yet in as normal a tone as he could manage. He did tend to mumble, after all, always had done. 

“It’s fine,” Stiles muttered, “don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Derek replied immediately, “I know you can take care of yourself. But you need to let people know how to talk to you.”

A frustrated sigh tumbled over Stiles’s lips and he dragged his fingers through his hair. “It’s a pain in the ass, having to ask people to repeat themselves over and over–”

“If they’re any sort of decent person, they’ll do it,” Derek said sharply. He wasn’t exactly a people person, but he’d dealt with enough kinds of people over the years to tell a good one from a bad one. In the years since setting up this place, he’d seen so many good people, good people who wanted the stray or wild animal they found to get better for no reason than they cared. It’d been an eye-opener, to say the least and a reassurance in humanity for someone who had desperately needed one.

It was probably part of what had helped him to heal after living for years in anger at the hands of cruelty.

In the long silence that stretched between them, the kit finished eating. Derek opened the blanket he was in to check him over more thoroughly, before setting him on the scales on the desk in the corner. He was putting on a bit of weight, which was good and he was about to set him in another of the kennels while he cleaned out his own one when an idea occurred to him.

He held out the little bundle to Stiles, who blinked, wide-eyed at him.

“Will you hold him for me, for a sec?” he asked and Stiles hesitated only for a moment before taking him so very, very carefully. Holding him against his chest as if he were terrified of dropping him.

“He’s…so small and warm,” Stiles murmured, mostly to himself and Derek ducked his head to hide his smile, turning to clean out the cage. The kit was taking more food each time as his stomach grew and more food meant more mess but it was a good sign. He would be able to start his rehabilitation to head back into the wild soon.

Derek had just washed his hands after cleaning the cage out when he finally let himself look back over Stiles, who had taken the chair Derek had vacated. He was running a fingertip along the fox’s little head over and over in gentle motions. 

“It’s easier to hear you when you look at me,” Stiles admitted, as he passed the fox up into Derek’s hands. Derek stared at him for a second, surprised by the breakthrough and nodded. But Stiles continued, a little of his old awkward honesty peaking through, “I can sort of see your mouth, I dunno why, it’s just easier to hear that way as well. The people at the hospital said lots of people with…with hearing impairments find it easier to communicate that way. I know it’s a pain but–”

“It’s fine, Stiles,” Derek said, securing the fox back in the cage. He cleared his throat, then turned to face him again. He wanted to thank him for telling him, for trusting him with something Stiles perceived to be such a weakness of his, but the words got stuck. Instead he said, “Not all of the animals here are able to be handled as much as him, but you can help, if you want?”  
  
  


Stiles' face seemed to brighten. “Really?”

Derek shrugged. “Sure. Just get some gloves to help me with the cat, will you?” He gestured with his chin to one of the pairs hanging from the wall. “She was a stray so she scratches when she’s picked up.”

Stiles reached for them and Derek turned to the cat who, to her credit, was really doing well socialising with him recently.

“What’s his name?” Stiles asked and Derek had been about to correct Stiles that the cat was a she when he saw Stiles looking at the fox again. “I mean, do you name them? I guess you maybe don’t, since you release most of them back into the wild or whatnot? I was the kind of kid that named all his stuffed animals growing up but I can’t really picture you as–”

“I name them,” Derek said, clear and simple as he pulled on a pair of gloves for himself. Just because he healed didn’t mean it didn’t hurt like hell when the cat clawed him up. He felt oddly pleased at hearing Stiles ramble a little. At seeing him interested in anything. “Just the first thing that comes to mind when they are brought in.”

Stiles nodded, sliding his gloves on and coming to stand by Derek. “So who are these guys?”

Derek motioned for Stiles to open the cage door so he could reach in with gloved hands and scoop the reluctant grey tortoise-shell cat carefully out onto the weighing scales. He looked up at Stiles’s face briefly to answer as he waited for the numbers to settle with her weight. “I just call her Grey.”

Grey, complete with a cone collar to stop her from picking at her stitches, hissed in irritation and wriggled but to her credit didn’t scratch this time. Derek scooped her back into a spare cage while he started to clean out hers. “I’ll take her collar off in a second so she can eat and drink. If you could watch her though to make sure she doesn’t go for the stitches?”

It was nice, Derek thought, working alongside someone. It felt natural, with Stiles at least. Stiles set out a bowl of water and food, Grey hunched sulkily at the back of the cage until Stiles closed the little door and backed up to give her space. Derek cleaned out her other cage while Stiles kept an eye on her. 

“Is that why you’re in here a lot? Because to have time out from the collar she has to be watched?” Stiles wondered aloud. 

Derek turned his head to him in between sweeping the cage mess into the bag. “Yeah. It’s not fair on her otherwise, she can’t drink with it on. And the fox needs feeding quite regularly still.”

He would check Grey’s bandages later, but the local vet that worked with him would be by tomorrow to take out her stitches and check over a few of his other charges. If the vet signed her off, he could let Grey out into the cattery soon for some more freedom while she recovered a bit more.

Derek wasn’t sure if she’d ever been a pet, or ever would be again otherwise. But even if she wasn’t suitable for a home, a few of the stray cats still hung around the property, happy enough to take advantage of the food he put out for them and roam freely otherwise. His presence seemed to keep any predators away and perhaps they knew that, knew they were safe here.

Stiles refilled the bowl with the food and water and, to Derek’s surprise, came to stand at his side to hold the bag open as Derek brushed the waste out of the cage. To his credit, Stiles didn’t recoil from the smell, but he did wrinkle his nose.

Derek smirked. “Cat urine has a very distinctive smell, but fox shit is the worst. First time I handled him over there after he was brought in, he crapped all over me.” And he was a little wriggler, and always damn hungry. Derek had housed a few foxes before, even baby ones but this little guy was a handful.

“What do you call him?” Stiles mused as he tied-off the bag.

Smoothing clean paper down inside the cage, Derek’s smirk broadened as he met Stiles’s gaze. “I call him Stiles.”

The laughter that burst out of Stiles was the most amazing thing Derek had ever heard. It shook Stiles’s whole body with it until his eyes watered. “You asshole,” he choked in overjoyed insult and Derek couldn’t help but give a laugh of his own in answer as he scooped a wriggling Grey back into her proper cage.


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Things shifted slightly after that. Stiles emerged from his room to share meals with Derek, even helping prepare them sometimes and more often than not he sought Derek out in the sanctuary to help. The endless time Stiles suddenly found himself with didn’t seem quite as empty as before. 

Oddly enough, he also found the more he moved and the more he kept busy, the less he ached. His hearing hadn't improved, not really. The constant hum ringing in his head never ceased, but it was no longer his sole focus. For the first time since his life got turned upside down, he had other things to think about and that seemed to be more useful, for Stiles at least.

He also had the nagging suspicion that Derek had been asking him to help out with increasingly exhausting tasks so that he was pretty much out cold the second his head hit the pillow. He wouldn't tell Derek how much it had helped though, to not lay awake, struggling to sleep with the ringing in his ears devouring the silence of the evening hours.

The door across the room opened and Stiles glanced up from where he was feeding Little Stiles to see Derek in the doorway.

“Everything okay?” Derek asked as he approached, clear and even-toned, looking fully at Stiles with every syllable so that the ringing couldn’t drown him out.

“All good,” Stiles agreed, keeping the bottle steady as the kit guzzled. “Wow, you’re a greedy little bastard.”

The muffled sound of Derek’s laughter mingled with the distortion and Stiles lifted his gaze again to see his eyes dancing with amusement.

“Been crapped on yet?”

Stiles grinned. “Nope. It must be personal to you.”

Derek gave him a scowl that held no heat and Stiles beamed to himself. Until the kit nipped at the blanket when Stiles dabbed spilled milk away from his muzzle – his finger getting nipped in the process.

“Ow!” He complained. “Hey, we’re on the same side, buddy.” Stiles sighed, setting Little Stiles into his cage, having already cleaned it earlier and secured the door. He shook off his finger with a little laugh but as he turned, he came up short on finding Derek right in front of him, a frown furrowing his brow. He mumbled something, too incoherent for Stiles to hear amid the ringing and caught Stiles’s wrist so he could see his smarting finger better. It was a little red, but no broken skin and he seemed satisfied with that. And yet they froze like that for a moment, a little too close and Derek’s lips moved without forming a sound. Then he stepped back, just a little as if he were recovering himself, blinking slightly as if he weren’t sure what had come over him.

“Uh…I…” He mumbled something, ducking his head but then winced apologetically and met Stiles’s gaze. “I’ve got some routine stuff to do around the property.”

Stiles blinked. “Oh, cool. Like…checking the perimeter, securing it against invading threats or…?”

Derek’s lips twitched and he ducked his head in that way he did when he was hiding a smile, but met Stiles’s gaze again before he spoke. “If you consider mother nature a threat, then yes.”

For the first time in what felt like forever, Stiles’s stomach flipped and he gave a nervous little laugh. “Derek, are you trying to assign me chores?”  
  
  


“Not everything is about cuddling the animals, Stiles.”

“Dude, I’ve shovelled shit with you. I’ve been chased by an otter while I was fixing its enclosure…”

There must’ve been something wrong with him because it felt so good to just…bicker with someone.

He followed Derek into the kitchen and hesitated at the smart speaker sitting on the counter, humming distantly the same tune that had been playing in the boarding room. He’d just thought it was background noise to keep the cat and the fox calm at first but now he thought about it, there always seemed to be music playing lately. 

Frowning at Derek’s back in confusion, Stiles approached the counter, where Derek had apparently set an iPod up to connect to the speakers dotted around the house. It sounded as tinny and hazy as everything else and yet somehow distracted from the high-pitched ringing, some abstract, soothing ~~but~~ melody he didn’t recognise. It reminded him of the kind of music that was always playing in the hearing clinic, which gave him pause.

Music therapy or sound therapy, the hospital had recommended it to help him sleep or concentrate but he hadn’t realised Derek had been able to hear all the way from the car, where he’d been waiting for Stiles outside.

He traced the outline of the speaker thoughtfully, feeling his throat swell up a little.

Derek didn’t cater to him, he didn’t give Stiles worried long sideways looks or treat him with kid gloves. He hadn’t even mentioned the night he’d seen Stiles broken from the migraine from hell. His way of helping was so subtle that you could squint and miss it. For all that though, it was infinitely more helpful than anything anyone else had done for him so far.

Except maybe the doctors that’d stitched him up after the blast, you know, credit where it was due.

“…Stiles?”

Stiles blinked, starting a little at Derek’s proximity.

“Yeah-huh-what?” he mumbled, earning himself one of those sardonic little brow lifts.

Derek dropped a toolbox onto the counter. “I said, don’t make me regret giving you control of a power drill.” He moved toward the door and Stiles gripped the handle of the toolbox, hesitating only a moment before calling out, eyes fixed on the smart speaker still singing gently at the edges of his fuzzy hearing, smoothing out the sharp edges of his ringing ears until it felt like…like maybe he could function without quite so much effort.

“Hey, Derek?” He had to look up, of course, to check Derek had listened, he didn’t trust his hearing to pick up a verbal answer at the distance of the kitchen. “Just…thanks, for…well everything really. But the music, it’s…it helps. A lot.”

An almost shy smile touched those lips and Stiles’s heart skipped treacherously. And by the way Derek’s head tilted, he swore he’d heard it.

“Come on,” Derek replied clearly. “The paddock fence isn’t going to fix itself.”

Stiles groaned, he loved all animals, seriously, but the mare Derek had been fostering had a mean streak and had nearly kicked Stiles three times already. “You’d better put the demon horse back in her stall because I’m not sure I can cheat death a second time in one year.”

Derek didn’t laugh but for the first time, Stiles felt like he could make light of things the way he usually did. 

The dark clouds that had enshrouded everything hadn’t abated, but the crescendo of the storm had calmed enough for him to see through at the very least...to see a way forward.

*

“You look better,” his dad said one evening, just as the sun had started its descent into still soft, muted orange-pinks. Stiles was sitting on a swing seat on the porch, watching as Derek fixed up the coop that sheltered the abandoned battery hens. They mostly had free-range of the side of the property, in a huge enclosure that stood between a copse of trees for shade. It must’ve been like heaven for them, Stiles thought, after a lifetime in cages and he found himself smiling at the thought that Derek had been able to give them that. 

It was how Derek had healed himself, he supposed, after so much trauma, by giving these creatures hope. The chickens and two ducks were a few of Derek’s permanent residents and they clucked at him excitedly as he moved around the enclosure, evidently expecting food.

“I feel like shit,” Stiles mused, feeling a bit shaky. That morning he’d been awoken by a blinding migraine, that’d come and gone so swiftly, with all the suddenness and devastation of a tsunami. Of course, Derek had come in, all sleep-mussed and bare-chested and hazy-eyed, his hand draining the immobilising pain until Stiles had drifted back into sleep. He’d awoken that morning to a cup of cold apple juice and a note to take it easy for the day. He’d spent most of it curled up under a blanket out on the porch, dozing on and off like an old man. He scowled at the thought, then sighed. “I thought I was getting better…”

His dad reached over and squeezed his knee through the blanket. “Kiddo, you _are._ God, you’re doing so much better than I’d expected. But you went through something that changed your life. You can’t expect miracles. You’re being too hard on yourself. No one is setting a timer on you, okay? Take things easy for a bit.”

Stiles turned from where he’d been watching his dad speak to look out at the property again. Derek had obviously finished his task as he had hooked the hammer and nails back into the toolbox and was now scratching one of the bantam chickens on the back of the neck. It was the one Stiles liked best because it looked like she had little white trousers on.

His dad tapped his knee again, only to put his palm to Stiles’s forehead. “Are you okay, kid? You seem pretty spacey?”

  
“Yeah. Sorry, no, it just…takes a lot out of me, the migraines I mean.”

His dad nodded. “And your scar tissue, it’s not bothering you too much? Derek said you helped him fix the paddock last week – that’s a pretty physical job.”

Stiles shrugged. “It was just drilling. Derek did all the heavy stuff. Werewolf strength and all.” He ran his right hand over his left side under the blanket, thinking of the knotted, tight tissue there that still pinched when he moved the wrong way. An ugly spread of skin, that was angry and pink. The hospital swore it’d fade in time.

“And you’re doing your exercises?”

“Yes, dad, jeez…” He dragged a hand through his hair. “I’m doing them, and Derek even let me use the truck to drive myself to physio yesterday.” It had been the first time he’d managed to drive on his own. And though it had been liberating, it hadn’t made the appointment anymore pleasant. He dragged his thumb over a little snag in the blanket. He always hurt after physiotherapy, and if he could guess it was probably what’d brought on the migraine but he wasn’t a medical expert so who knew. The staff were kind-hearted and patient yet firm, pushing him, which both exasperated and reassured him. Pain, he could deal with, it was being tiptoed around he couldn’t bear.

“I saw the hearing specialist again yesterday too. Everything is ‘progressing nicely’ I’m told, but…”

His dad said something when Stiles’s own words trailed off and he felt a pang when he looked up and his dad winced, obviously realising his words had been too much of a mumble, as was his usual when they talked like this. His voice always went so soft, like it was barely there and Stiles struggled with it and he hated it. He hated struggling. It made him feel like he was sixteen years old again and fighting with all he had and failing to keep up with a bunch of werewolves and supernaturals.

“Sorry,” his dad said. “It’s not improving at all?”  
  
  


“She thinks…she thinks it might improve a bit, and there are things I can try to help ease the…feedback from certain sounds, but she doesn’t think it’ll ever go away completely. Not now.”

His dad squeezed his shoulder and didn’t let go. He said something but Stiles let it drift over him, listened instead to the sound of the portable speaker he’d brought out with him. Derek’s playlist was suspiciously full of various sound therapy tracks, some quiet and soothing, some more upbeat. Some worked better than others for him, he found and he’d contemplated asking Derek to remove the offenders more than once, but that meant acknowledging the elephant in the room. This section was good anyway. He let it wash over him for a while, trying to pick through the screeching in his ears to see what he could and couldn’t hear. 

Everyone at the hospital kept saying how lucky he was, that he could still hear some things, that he could still walk, still move his arms and legs. But just because it could’ve been worse didn’t make him feel any better about his life having been turned upside down.

“Work offered me a desk job,” Stiles muttered. The sound of his own voice was muffled, nearly inaudible to himself but at least with the shrill ringing soothed by the music he could function.

“There’s nothing shameful about a desk job, kid. I’m hoping to get one for myself in the last few years of my career, when I’m too old to do my job the way I do now,” his dad assured him. “Your mom worked a desk job.”

“I _know_ ,” Stiles sighed impatiently, pressing a palm to one of his ears firmly, as if that could help clear something somehow. He didn’t mean that there was anything wrong with riding a desk, he had just never thought he’d be doing it at his age. And he’d never thought someone else would be the one to decide the job he’d worked so hard for wasn’t for him anymore. His eyes stung but he looked back at his dad anyway. “So you think I should take it?”

His dad’s expression was always so warm, so soft. “You know what I think? I think you’ve got an opportunity here to take your time, consider what you wanna do. Help Derek out for a while, while you figure things out. He seems glad to have you.”

With a frown, Stiles turned back to where Derek had shooed the birds back into the coop inside the enclosure, which he closed safely before approaching the porch. 

“How can you tell?” 

“I’m a sheriff, I notice things,” his dad offered candidly, just a few seconds before Derek joined them.

“Hey,” he breathed, taking the thermos of coffee Stiles offered up from his place under the blanket.

Stiles stared at Derek for a moment, finding himself watching his throat as he swallowed. When Derek caught him looking Stiles said, “uh, you’ve got a feather in your hair.”

Derek blinked, confused for a moment before running his hand through his hair until the offending feather drifted down onto the floor.

When Stiles caught his dad’s expression out of the corner of his eye, he looked distinctively thoughtful. Stiles didn’t like it.

“I got some steaks for us tonight,” Derek said, setting the thermos down, looking to Stiles. “I can get them on the grill if you want to do the potatoes?”

“Are you undermining my authority over my dad’s diet in front of him?” Stiles scowled at Derek’s grin. 

“So the steaks were a good choice when you saw them this morning, just not when you realised your dad would be having any?”

“Exactly!” Stiles protested but Derek just gave him that amused, shit-eating grin and snatched the blanket off his lap. “Potatoes, Stiles. Your dad’s just driven here after a week’s work, he must be hungry.”

When the door into the kitchen closed behind Derek, Stiles’s dad had looked like Derek was God’s gift, but a thoughtful look was there all the same.

“He doesn’t take your shit, he’s good for you.”

“You just love him because he feeds you red meat and you can bond over baseball,” Stiles said mulishly, gathering the flask and his laptop and the speaker up, preparing to head back inside.

“I’m serious, Stiles. He doesn’t… _coddle_ you. He doesn’t let his worry for you change the way he treats you.” His dad gave him an adoring look tinged with sadness. “I can’t give you that, kid. And I think that’s what you need in someone.”

Brow furrowed, Stiles tried to decide if he’d misheard his dad, because that sentence didn’t quite make sense. 

“You mean…what I need right now.”

“I meant what I said,” his dad replied, soft but distinguishable, before he made for the back door that led into the kitchen.

*

His dad travelled back to visit them once, sometimes twice a week, whenever there was a gap in his shifts. Usually he got two days in the middle of the week and came up to join them. He helped them out around the property or sometimes just lazed around with Stiles on the couch. A couple of times his dad took him fishing, since it was one of the area's main proclivities; although Derek didn’t like to partake even though he had what the Sheriff proclaimed was the ‘ideal fishing spot’ in the woodland at the back of his property.

It was all ethereal. It was something he and his dad had last done when he was twelve, before he’d been made Sheriff and his time had been less scarce. It wasn’t until the most recent time though, as he and his dad loaded their catch into the cooler that he really thought about why the trip had made him feel better. 

It reminded him of a time where he got to forget everything in the outside world, got to…well, not be a kid exactly, kids didn’t drink beer, but a time when he just didn’t have to worry about whatever was going on back in reality.

That’s what Derek made him feel like. Only…more. Different to his dad. A safe place in the middle of his problems and dark, encircling thoughts.

“Cook this up for us, honey?” Stiles teased cheerfully as he and his dad returned to the house to find Derek reading at the kitchen island.

Those dark brows and green-hazel eyes pierced Stiles but his lips twitched wryly. “Are you insinuating I’m your house-wife?”

Stiles smirked. “Or house-husband. Don’t be sexist. I’ll get you the apron if you want though?”

“If you want me to strangle you with it,” Derek scoffed, even as he took the cooler off Stiles’s grinning dad. 

“Save the sweet talk for when my dad isn’t here, snookums.”

His dad rolled his eyes but he looked happier than Stiles had seen him in a long time. That little worry line between his brows had diminished somewhat.

That night, after they waved his dad off on his journey back to Beacon Hills, Stiles found himself joining Derek again in the living room, watching some interior design competition show in his sweats and fluffiest socks because he hated getting cold feet. They weren’t exactly in close quarters but with his legs stretched out across the L shaped sofa, he could feel Derek’s closeness and it felt more intimate than anything he’d ever shared with anyone before. Like his socked feet were more personal than the way he might’ve shown old hook-ups his dick.

Stiles tried not to think about how warm he felt that Derek always seemed to have the subtitles on, like it was something he did anyway.

“You had a little blip earlier,” Derek murmured, still looking at the TV. And it wasn’t until then that Stiles realised, with a start that he’d been staring at Derek.

“Huh? What?”

“Yesterday, when you and your dad were on the porch, you were…you felt…sad.” Derek’s face twisted, as if he were annoyed with himself that he couldn’t think of a better way of phrasing it. “You haven’t felt that down in a while.”

Stiles looked back to the TV, watching the designer pull out some garish flowered wallpaper as he thought.

“Is it because of what your work emailed you about the other day?” Derek asked, when Stiles said nothing.

Stiles swallowed. “Did you…hear what we were talking about?”

“I try not to listen, but sometimes a few words sneak through.”

Derek was looking at him now, the soft light of the side lamps and the TV screen casting a soft glow across his face. Stiles’s toes shifted, a part of him always fidgeting, as if his racing mind must be betrayed somehow. Derek’s fingers twitched, then curled in his own lap. An abortive moment that never even was.

“The first thing I did when I woke up was get dad to check my teammates on that assignment were okay,” Stiles said, turning his face back to the TV without really seeing it. “Everyone got out okay. I was hurt the worst and I’m walking and breathing. But all I seem to care about is this stupid ringing in my ears, about my job and my damn scar tissue. What is all that compared to my life? I should be glad I was lucky, right?”

There was a long pause, as if Derek wanted to make sure he was done before he replied evenly, “but you don’t feel like it?”

Stiles set his jaw. “You were the damn basketball star, weren’t you? Cora said you were your mom’s favourite. That you were the golden child who could do no wrong. Was she right?” He wondered if he’d pushed the boundaries one inch too far by mentioning Derek’s mother, but Derek just watched him, his expression giving nothing away, as if he were merely waiting to see what point Stiles would eventually ramble into.

“I’ve never done one thing right in my life,” Stiles breathed, throat feeling tight all of a sudden. “I’ve been a screw-up and a sidekick my entire life. The frickin’ comic relief, alright? But for the first time I wasn’t a joke. I was an _agent,_ Derek, I was someone my dad could be proud of.”

Derek’s eyes shone in the light, dark and intense but still so, so gentle. So warm that it made the tightness in Stiles’s throat worse. 

“Stiles, your dad wasn’t proud of you because you were an agent. He was proud of you because you were working hard at something you loved doing.”

It was so startling to hear something like that come out of Derek’s mouth that Stiles felt more lost than he’d ever felt. How could Derek have his shit together, be so damn _zen_ when Stiles was falling apart? How could the world and everyone else in it just carry on when he felt like he was spinning out of control? 

Stiles grinded his teeth now, angry and frustrated with his sense of loss. “You don’t know what it was like, years just barely keeping up with a pack of _literal_ wolves and not being any use to any of you except for Google-fu and then I was… I was good at my job, Derek. I made a difference. I saved people–”

“You saved me.” 

If Stiles had been spinning out of orbit before, now he felt like he’d been sucked into a black hole. He stared at Derek, exhaling shakily with a confused frown.

“You saved my life before you were an agent, Stiles. More than once...and a lot of other people too.” He tilted his head a little, studying Stiles carefully. “This self-doubt doesn’t suit you and it’s so misplaced I’m wondering where the hell you actually were while we were dealing with all that crap back then.”

Stiles pushed up from the couch, wincing as his side pinched at the sharp movement across his skin and inside deep in his muscle tissue. Because he’d been a kid back then, a kid too stupid to know what lay ahead. A kid that thought his whole future was ahead of him.

“I know you think it’s just a job…”

“Stiles–”

“But it’s not just about the job. It’s about the migraines and the goddamn _ringing_ and the scar tissue that means I put on a t-shirt like an eighty-year-old man.”

He didn’t think he’d let it all out, not once since the incident. He felt his body shaking from the explosion of emotion releasing and it was cathartic. It was immense and yet Derek just watched him silently, as if Stiles had whispered his words.

“Does it hurt now?”

Stiles blinked, almost startled. “What? No. No it’s…usually after I shower, or after physio or if I try and move my left side too much. Usually it’s just sort of…tight.” And the doctors said his mobility should improve some but if he still found it difficult to move normally, there were injections or surgery I could try. 

The idea of surgery made his stomach clench. He hated hospitals, probably no one except his dad could understand just how much.

“Can I see it?” Derek asked, voice giving nothing away. Calm and soft.

“What? No just…no.” He felt exposed all of a sudden and he swallowed, his outburst leaving him shaky and vulnerable with the rush of emotion he’d held together for so long.

As if reading his mind, Derek turned his body to face him, slow and careful, like Stiles was one of his tentative animals. His arm stretched across the back of the sofa and the muted light caught his profile so Stiles couldn’t help but notice that there were little speckles of grey in Derek’s beard. The sight did things to Stiles’s stomach that took him by surprise.

“What are you afraid I’ll see, Stiles?” Derek murmured, so intimately into the space between them.

It was so bizarre that all at once Stiles was reminded of the broken, shattered man he’d comforted when Boyd had died and the cocky, riled up, almost hungry man he’d rescued from that raid back when he was still an intern. As vulnerable and raw as the first, and as hungry as the latter.

Stiles licked his dry lips instinctively as he floundered for what to say, caught under Derek’s gaze, eyes dark and shining in the soft light. His feet fidgeted and without breaking eye contact, Derek’s hand moved to cover them, still them, as if he feared any movement would break whatever connection held them fast to each other just then. Stiles sat up a little more at that, frowning slightly as he tried to decipher Derek’s thoughts. 

All at once, he realised his heart was pounding. His stomach was tight and trembling in spite of the tight, sharp pulling in his side as he found himself leaning forward. 

Lights flashed through the windows just then, headlights from down the long drive. Both of them started at the dazzling intrusion. Derek blinked, staring at Stiles for a moment as if he were a little lost. Then he squeezed Stiles’s captive feet gently, before rising. “Let’s see what this is about,” he offered as he headed toward the door. Stiles hastened to follow, scrambling into his shoes as he went. 

It was quite normal, apparently, for the local vet to pass his patients to Derek when they were without a home or safe place to finish recovering. It was even quite a regular occurrence for his assistant to bring Derek the patients at odd hours, especially if they didn’t have the room to house them. 

Tonight they brought Derek a doe that’d been hit by a car. She’d made a pretty good recovery after her surgery but now needed a safe place to heal before she could be released. For some reason, Derek looked troubled as the three of them settled the deer in one of the converted stables.

Stiles folded his arms along the stable door and watched the doe warily take in her surroundings, resting his chin on his arms as Derek saw the vet’s assistant off. When Derek returned to him, alone, it was with a frank expression, the same open look he’d given Stiles every day since he’d got here. Although this one was touched by the ‘we haven’t got time for any shit, Stiles’ look he usually reserved for life-threatening situations.

“Get your jacket and boots,” he said, leading the way out of the stable block and securing it carefully behind them before heading toward the house. Stiles had to walk at a near-jog to keep up. He wondered for a second if he’d misheard Derek, but then found his jacket being pushed into his hands.

“What’s going on?” he asked as Derek pulled a jacket on too and reached for the keys to the truck. It wasn’t until they were both in the truck and Derek had sped down the long drive and out into the trees that he answered.

“The doe had a fawn,” Derek said distractedly, rolling down the window and letting the cool night air whisk in. 

Even through the adrenaline pounding through his veins, even though Derek wasn’t looking, even though his head was half-turned away, Stiles heard him.

He blinked for a second, his brain screeching to a halt at the realisation. Derek and his dad were always so careful to look right at him and speak normally, that he hadn’t really noticed until he’d _had_ to. The ringing in his ears, shrill and grating was still there, when Derek had spoken it’d still sounded a little distant, fuzzy as if he were talking to him through a wall, but he’d understood it just fine. He’d heard him even over the noise of the truck. That fact alone surprised him so that it took him a moment to process what Derek had actually said.

He frowned. “Like…a baby deer? You could tell?”

Derek nodded, eyes on the road, illuminated only by their headlights as he drove on, toward what Stiles assumed was the stretch of road where the doe had been hit. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask if the vet’s assistant had told Derek the location when Stiles wasn’t paying attention or if he was following his wolfy nose but then Derek spoke.

“I could smell it on her, yeah, but the vet also said they thought she had one because of the milk. It must have been hiding in the bushes or maybe the guy who hit the deer just didn’t see it but she definitely has a fawn out there.”

Stiles felt a little sick at the thought of a baby out there on their own, furry or not. He tried to remember when baby deer were born. Spring, wasn’t it? Or midsummer? “Can you tell how old?”

Shaking his head, Derek took the long curving corner ahead into a stretch of road with trees growing tall and curving across the road like a tunnel. “It’s not that precise.” Wolfy nose it was then. “But likely around eight weeks.”

Stiles stared at his profile in the light from the dashboard, his face mostly shadowed, intense with concentration, focussed. He swallowed thickly, his mind racing with so many questions. “How long can a baby like that last without its mom?”

“The vets in town, they’re good people, but they don’t have the resources to chase after what they consider a lost cause,” Derek said, not looking at Stiles still, they were going too fast. “Predators give my place a wide berth because of my presence. Bears and mountain lions are averse to the smell of werewolf. But they’re thriving around here.”

“You think the poor little guy’s gonna be bear food by the time we get there?”

The silence didn’t imbue Stiles with hope.

They must’ve been nearing the accident site, because Derek slowed, his nostrils flared a little as if he were inhaling the air heavily. Stiles gripped the edge of his seat in an effort to stay still, to not fidget and definitely not make a comment about Derek hanging out the window like a Labrador. He breathed shallowly, trying to be at least distracting as possible until Derek finally pulled to a stop. They sat for a moment, Derek’s head tilted slightly as he killed the engine and listened. Then he reached for the car door.

“Have you got a flashlight?” Stiles asked, whispering...it just felt like a whispering situation. He opened the glove compartment only to realise Derek had stilled. He considered Stiles for a long moment, before passing a heavy-duty flashlight from the door pocket.

That act of camaraderie, that sign of confidence in Stiles’s ability to help him, in his ability to function as readily as he ever could, meant more to him than any platitudes or well-wishes from his once-work colleagues and Scott and Lydia over email or Skype. 

He followed Derek to the side of the road and down the shallow embankment, the cool dark biting at his neck. He saw the smear of blood where the doe must’ve fallen after being struck when Derek paused there briefly, before moving toward the tree line. Stiles kept the torch directed for them both, even though Derek needed it less than him. The ringing in his ears was shrill and piercing in the deafening quiet and so Stiles couldn’t hear if Derek was sniffing but he thought he was, by his posture and the way he kept pausing to scent the breeze whenever it picked up.

At last they came to an overgrown area between trees, complete with thorns and Derek ducked down. He tilted his head slightly as if considering the undergrowth before looking to Stiles.

“Alright, we got him. He’s in there. Not too deep, but enough to be a pain.”

Stiles lowered the torch so it was aiming away from the bush and knelt down, trying to see. He thought he just about caught the glimmer of eyes deep within, but he wasn’t sure. “What do we do?” he breathed, trying to remember if it was fawns who couldn’t keep warm without their mother...or was that penguins? 

Derek shifted in closer to him. It was likely only to ensure Stiles heard him when he leaned in close, hot breath steaming over the shell of Stiles’s ear until it flushed hot. Even so, Stiles felt a lightning streak of heat zip down his throat to the pit of his stomach where he squirmed. 

“I’m gonna go in, see if I can grab him without him hurting himself on the thorns,” Derek said, low but understandable into his ear.

The sound was soft and shuddering, a little raspy at the edges, like someone talking too close into a microphone, but Stiles understood. Even through the inappropriate heat coiling in his belly.

Then Derek’s warmth vanished from his side. Stiles thought if he strained he could hear leaves crunching underfoot, but he wasn’t sure. With Derek gone, he felt blind and deaf in the darkness and struggled to keep his breathing even. He focussed hard on the tiny gap in the brush ahead of him, steadying himself on his haunches as he waited.

There wasn’t much wind down here in the thicket. Without it rushing through Stiles’s ears, it should’ve been easier to concentrate, easier to hear but it only made the constant ring, the keening whine like that of fluorescent lighting, more obvious. There was always noise back at the house, always music following him around, even when he drifted off to sleep. The distraction made things easier, made the whine more bearable and it was only now, without any sound except his own breathing, that he realised how much better he felt at home. How Derek had made it his safe place without ever really acknowledging it. 

How it had been the first time he felt able to breathe again after the accident, think again without pain tearing his logic to pieces, he realised every little niggling thing he’d ever felt for Derek had come rushing back. The little blips he felt with each text or the phone call over the years hadn’t been anywhere near enough to prepare him for the reality of Derek Hale and everything Stiles felt for him, hitting him all at once. It was like everything had been enhanced, because there was nothing between them now, no alphas, hunters or demons, except for their own, and Derek was caring for him without taking care of him. A simple domesticity had made his life worth it after it’d been turned upside down.

Suddenly a thud sounded and Stiles jumped. Derek swore, shouted out his name and then before Stiles knew it, the fawn launched out of the narrow hole in the thorn bush. It hit Stiles hard in the chest and he sprawled backwards with its momentum. It may have been a baby, but it was strong. He scrambled in fright, kicking out and narrowly missing Stiles’s head. Stiles caught him, wrapping his arms around him and tucking his head down into its neck to avoid being head butted. The fawn’s heart was thudding under Stiles’s grip and he squirmed, twisting sideways and wrenching Stiles’s bad shoulder until Stiles cried out. 

Rather than letting go, he rolled them, firm but careful not to crush the deer, pinning him more with his weight than his arms. Then Stiles felt him go still, chest heaving, heart pounding but otherwise silent and unmoving. Stiles flopped, dropping his head to its neck once more and trying to breathe through the hot, pulsing pain in his shoulder.

His flashlight had fallen in the scramble and it now cast its light across him and the deer where they lay. Derek’s shadow fell over them as he ducked down.

“Are you okay?” he asked, voice urgent with worry.

Stiles nodded through gritted teeth. “Good, yeah, just…” He winced, leaning up slightly when Derek’s hands came down to rest on the deer’s neck, steadying him as Stiles rose. “My shoulder,” he managed, grasping it with his good hand and feeling the tender muscle twist and groan under his fingers. The scar tissue, both inside and out, felt angry hot but he could move everything still. “Is he okay?”

Derek looked down to the deer, who was starting to wriggle a little again until Derek scooped him up in such a way as to trap his flailing legs. “He’s good. Bit scared, but he’s not gone into shock. Hopefully he’ll be okay when we reunite him with his mother.”

Stiles winced. “I guess there’s a safer way to trap a deer than pounce on him huh?” He probably broke like a billion wild animal capture rules or something, he thought as he gingerly bent to pick up the flashlight. From its outward glow, he caught the soft look on Derek’s face and his face heated.

“Probably,” Derek mused, but he didn’t sound or look displeased. “But you got him. It’s harder to catch them without hurting them when they get a run on you, even when you’re a werewolf.”

Nodding distractedly, with adrenaline still thudding wildly through his veins and sweat making his shirt stick to him, Stiles tried hard not to think how good it felt to do something good. He swore he heard a whisper of pride at the edge of Derek’s still slightly tinny voice.

Licking his lips, he held Derek’s gaze. “Let’s get on with this family reunion, shall we?”

*

He was still shaking even as he watched Derek in the floodlight outside the barn that acted as the stables. Stiles gripped his throbbing shoulder, rubbing at the abused tissue through his gnarled skin. In their wide circle of light, he watched Derek’s hands move carefully over the fawn’s legs and back, checking for obvious injuries.

Derek wasn’t a certified veterinarian, but he could smell the injuries or something, he’d told Stiles once. Stiles watched his broad fingers, powerful but gentle, trace over brown fur and he swallowed, shifting slightly where he stood. Derek glanced up at him briefly, as if checking something, before reaching for the blanket he’d retrieved from the barn before Stiles had helped him unload the fawn from the truck.

“Does are notoriously wary about human scents on their fawns. She might not take him back,” Derek warned, wrapping the blanket around the fawn’s body and rubbing him all over. 

“Is that the blanket from the cage she arrived in?” Stiles asked as Derek rubbed the fabric over the fawn’s head and legs. He paused then, meeting Stiles’s gaze.

“Yeah. It smelled strongly of her, it must’ve been with her in the cage when she came around from the anaesthetic when they stitched her up.” He sniffed subtly, barely enough for Stiles to see in the low light, before rubbing around the fawn’s neck. It fidgeted but didn’t struggle and Stiles wondered why the fawn wasn’t more scared of Derek, an apex predator.

After another few minutes, Derek seemed pleased with his work, because he wrapped the fawn up entirely in the blanket and then carried him into the barn. 

Stiles kept back as he followed them in, just in case his human stink preceded him somehow. He did feel pretty ripe after wrestling with a wild animal in the dark. Even if it was a baby deer. He stepped forward just enough to watch Derek ease the baby over into the same stable that housed the doe, blanket and all, then stood back where Stiles was. The stable was a semi-open structure made from beams and struts in honey-coloured wood, enough to let them both see what was going on inside. 

Stiles’s breath still hadn’t fully calmed on the journey back, but all the same it caught in his throat. It seemed like forever until the doe shook off her frozen wariness, then she inched forward slowly. Stiles swore he saw her wet nose twitching as she scented the air. She froze when the fawn finally knocked the blanket off his head. They both watched each other for a fleeting second and then the fawn stumbled toward his mother.

Stiles watched her tense, his hand flailing out and catching hold of Derek’s wrist without even thinking about it, just as the fawn nudged at his mother’s side. She seemed to sort of hitch her leg, sniffing at him as he went for her, unsure and Stiles swore he literally stopped breathing for just a second. Then, at last, she seemed to settle, sniffing at her baby’s frantically wagging tail, her own swishing in response. It wasn’t until she finally let him in close enough to nurse from her that Stiles relaxed – and realised he had been gripping Derek’s wrist like a lifeline.

“Uh, sorry,” he said quickly, releasing Derek awkwardly. He looked back at the deer, watched the mother licking her baby’s fur as he tried to gather himself. Because Derek’s lecture on how you should never touch a fawn unless you’re a hundred percent sure it’s abandoned notwithstanding, he’d helped to do that, to do that amazing thing and yeah, while it wasn’t catching drug lords or kidnappers or whatever, it felt just as rewarding.

He never thought he’d be able to do something that felt worthwhile again.

“Stiles?” Derek said and although Stiles hadn’t turned to him until Derek had spoken, he’d definitely recognised the sound as his name. Derek looked as if he was searching him for something, but he said nothing more and so Stiles broke the silence himself.

“How come he wasn’t more scared of you than me? I mean…all of the animals, really? Like…you say your presence keeps predators away, so why do all these animals accept you? Are you talking to them or something in some non-verbal wolfie language?”

Derek rolled his eyes. “I’m not Dr Dolittle, Stiles.”

“Definitely not not funny enough to be Eddie Murphy,” Stiles agreed, just so he could see Derek scowl. 

“You realise animals see humans as apex predators too?” he replied, making a fair point. “They’re just as wary with me as they are with any strange human. They all get used to me, to different degrees, I just…” He gestured around the barn in general. “I can read them a bit better than most humans, I guess.” 

His eyes always did that thing where they swept across Stiles’s whole face, then settled back to hold his gaze again. And he always had that open, soft look that would almost be vulnerable, if Stiles hadn’t felt so naked himself. Like Derek could read him too somehow.

“Let’s…head back inside. It’s probably about time for Little Stiles’s next feed, right?” Stiles offered, trying hard not to think about how totally lame and evasive that sounded.

*

Derek was still doing a final check of the property, same as he did every night, when Stiles felt brave enough to try and shower. He got as far as running the water but that was about it. Just getting undressed was a feat these days. After a struggle, with his teeth gritted against the pinching in his shoulder, he ended up barefoot in just his jeans with his t-shirt twisted up between his left shoulder and neck.

He looked at himself in the mirror that hadn’t started to steam up yet. He was sort of flushed with his hair sticking up and a light sheen of sweat from both his earlier struggle with the deer and his current struggle with his clothes.

His sore shoulder looked normal enough. He stared at it as he prodded it gingerly. He’d definitely twisted it good and it was with bitter resignation that he found himself agreeing with his former bosses, that he couldn’t function in the field if he couldn’t get his damn t-shirt off after a struggle with a smallish animal. He thought about all the times he’d fought with supernatural creatures and armed criminals only to be stumped by his own damn shirt.

The bitter realisation and the hurdle sapped any positivity he’d gained from the evening’s success, from Derek’s proximity, from the good couple of days with his dad. He turned slightly, scowling at the stark pink knotted scar tissue that crept up his back toward his left shoulder. The scars from where the blast had just caught him, where it pinched on the outside as sharply as his shoulder did on the inside.

Suddenly the bathroom door opened and Stiles jerked, struggling to pull his t-shirt back down awkwardly without actually putting his left arm back inside, so he looked a complete idiot when he turned to face Derek in the doorway. 

“Dude!” he snapped, flustered and very conscious of his poorly dressed, sweaty body and insane hair. “It’s called knocking.”

Derek blinked. “You left the bedroom door open, and the bathroom door,” he said, frowning as if that made sense.

Maybe it did. Why was Stiles so flustered? 

It was likely Stiles’s distorted hearing wouldn’t have picked up on the sound of him knocking anyway, especially over the shower running. Instead of backing out of the room shamefacedly though, Derek stepped further inside. 

“I could smell pain,” Derek explained, and Stiles couldn’t help but wonder, surprisingly for the first time since he’d started living there with Derek, what other things Derek’s senses picked up. He knew Derek tried not to listen but some things…

He supposed it was a sign he was feeling more like himself that it actually bothered him.

When Stiles didn’t say anything, Derek continued, “I wanted to see…if you were okay.”

He was ~~just~~ very aware of the fact that his jeans were open and he was standing there with one arm stuck inside his t-shirt. Steam spilled out into the room from the running shower, a fuzzy, dreamlike cloud encircling them both and Derek’s eyes looked so green in the light from the opalescent fittings above. 

“I’m fine, just my shoulder.” He tried for indifference but the defensiveness came out loud and clear, even to him.

Derek’s brows pulled together for a moment, his lips parted but there was a delay before any words reached them. “Can I see?” his voice was almost husky, it reached all the way down into Stiles’s stomach and pulled tight. It was almost lost to the warped sound of the shower but it reached him through the billows of steam.

It was the same voice from earlier, when they’d been so close Stiles had been able to see every fleck of hazel in his eyes. This time though, he reached for the hem with his good arm and pulled his t-shirt awkwardly up over his throbbing shoulder.

As if Stiles were one of the wary animals in his care, Derek’s steps were slow. He focussed on Stiles’s shoulder and reached for it with the same caution. When his hand touched his skin, Stiles winced for so many reasons. Derek turned him just a little, so he could see the angry red blemish across Stiles’s left shoulder blade. Stiles caught his reflection in the rapidly steaming mirror, his hair was still mussed and his scarred skin was exposed under Derek’s gaze, the part of him he associated with weakness.

He wasn’t even really sure why that mattered, except he definitely _did_ know why it mattered. And Derek was touching his sweaty skin and it should’ve been as clinical as all the examinations at the clinic, the hospital or the physiotherapist felt but it was _intimate_. It was heated and searching and Derek’s fingers settled over his shoulder, thumb tracing feather-light over the worst of the scar tissue until Stiles felt a bit giddy. Then he pressed the pad of his thumb in, massaging gently until Stiles tensed at the good kind of discomfort, the satisfying pain of twisted knots being loosened.  
  
  


Stiles braced himself on the sink and he couldn’t help himself. He hung his head, he let a low groan-gasp spill over his lips into the steamy room, echoing faintly. Derek paused and Stiles shook, because it felt so good, because it felt like a relief, felt like everything and yet too much to be seen and touched rather than _examined._ He could feel Derek siphoning the pain out of his skin even as he worked out the locked, damaged tissue until he was positively dazed by it all.

Stiles almost felt his body sag with disappointment when Derek released him. But as he turned to face him, not knowing what he would see in Derek’s face, Derek slowly pulled his t-shirt over his head, then down and off his other arm. When Stiles’s head appeared out of the shirt, he found Derek’s face much closer than he remembered. Whether it was the steam from the shower or something else, Derek looked flushed too and this time Stiles watched as Derek’s tongue moistened his lips absently.

“I…” Stiles swallowed. “I’d…better get in the shower.” The steam had filled the room now, encircling them both and spilling out into the bedroom. He was sure that his parents had raised him to not be wasteful, or something like that. He wasn’t really thinking all that clearly. Maybe he was just a coward. It was with both relief and great distress when he watched Derek step back, as if his head had cleared with Stiles’s words. He closed the door behind himself on his way out and Stiles stared aimlessly at the door for a moment after he’d gone, before he finally got his shit together and dropped his jeans and underwear to climb in the shower.

He lathered himself up, marvelling at the absence of pain in his shoulder, but still mindful of it. Because, you know, just because the pain was gone didn’t mean he was healed. It wasn’t until he stepped fully under the spray again to let the water sluice through his hair, beat against his skin that he found his mind wandering back again to what things Derek’s senses picked up, even when he tried not to.

Derek was pretty big on privacy but he was also oddly attuned to Stiles and had a habit of showing up when Stiles’s pain spiked. It was probably the unspoken pack bond thing or whatever, the friendship that was always something more. Pain was stronger than most scents or emotions though, he supposed.

His mind wove off on a tangent of possibilities as he remembered Derek’s hand on his shoulder, on his neck when he got migraines and his feet earlier. Just touching him in such normal places and yet setting him alight in ways he hadn’t felt since forever. He found himself reaching down, grasping himself and finding himself hard. He squeezed and felt his jaw go slack with the pleasure there, marvelling at it because it’d been so long since he’d cared enough to feel.

Bracing himself against the shower wall, he stroked himself, caught in the deviant hope that Derek both was and wasn’t listening. It was like looking for something and only finding it when you stopped looking, because Derek had been there the whole time for years, at the end of the phone and then again, here.

When Stiles needed him most there he was. There _it_ was, everything that Stiles had ever felt for him as clear as day, not like a big revelation but a thousand tiny little things that drew him to Derek always. At the end of a shitty case when he’d send him a wisecracking text or call him up to pester him, or the times Derek had shown up in Beacon Hills when Stiles had been visiting his dad or Scott. He was warm and safe and drove him crazy. Crazy as in exploding with part irritation, part affection and crazy as in this needy, desperate urging flame that couldn’t be sated, licking up his loins until he was shuddering with it as he stroked himself until he spilled against the shower wall.

He stood under the spray for a long time, breathing hard and wondering. Not wondering why he’d never figured it out exactly, because he’d always known at the back of his mind. He’d always known he and Derek had a connection, but he’d never stopped long enough to _want_ before, to analyse or understand it. He supposed now he had. 

What left him reeling wasn’t that Derek had magically fixed his body or his life or that he somehow felt instantly healed from the depression or the complete ending of the career he’d worked so hard for. Nothing was fixed, nothing had changed except that Derek made him _want_ , or had reminded him how to want, he supposed, because a part of him had always wanted Derek. Derek hadn’t waved a little wand and fixed things, but he’d let Stiles see things, possibilities, that he still had so much more to offer, more to live for than maybe he’d first thought.


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for all your wonderful comments and kudos. Not just on this story but all my stories over the last few months. I've been super slow in replying to them recently (my head is a crazy place right now) but I have read every single comment and am replying to them all it's just taking me a bit longer than usual. Every kind word has just kept be going the last few months and cannot thank you enough for that. So good to share these stories with you all. It means the world to me.

Chapter Three

  
  


The thing about recovery,  from not only a physical injury  but also mental, and  having to adjust to something life altering, was that you woke up each day expecting it to be better than the last, but of course it wasn’t. It was a lot of pressure, Stiles thought, he put a lot of pressure on himself to feel better, to be better every day and in reality, the only person expecting him to be magically fixed and okay with what happened to him was himself.

It was gradual. It was waking up one morning and finding that the last few days had actually been pretty great, that the good days were slowly but surely outnumbering the bad. It didn’t mean that there would never be bad days, it just meant he would start to see them as worth struggling through, one at a time, until he found the next good day. Or even  a  good moment. 

Slowly but surely, he was teaching himself to grasp every good feeling. Good feelings like when his dad’s car pulled down the long drive on his weekly visits . Or when Derek and he finally managed to release the mama deer and her fawn back into the woods together with a sense of a job well done. Or even just lying on the grass on an unseasonably warm day, with Grey sprawled across his belly and kneading his chest with her front paws , as if to make him more comfortable, glaring at him all the while as if daring him to stop her.

Stiles grinned, scratching gently behind her ears. “You are like some secret softie, you love the cuddles, don’t give me that face.”

Derek had said at the start that she might have been someone’s house cat once, since she had been fairly friendly once the cone was off and she wasn’t being poked, prodded or stitched up. They’d put notices out to see if anyone had lost a cat but no one had stepped up to claim her and Stiles was secretly glad. She’d taken quite a shine to him recently and loved nothing more than sleeping on him in awkward positions or following him around the cattery she practically lived in these days as he tidied up.

“You know, I promised my dad I’d do my exercises every morning. You’re sabotaging,” Stiles said without a hint of genuine blame. Grey purred when he rubbed under her chin and finally stopped trampling him with her front paws to lie down fully. They were sprawled in the big open area of the cattery, with the sun beaming down on them. There were only two other kittens in there with Grey at the moment, awaiting their forever home lounging on the raised wooden platform at the back under the shade of a tree, fat and lazy after their meal.

Stiles let his head fall back against the grass and closed his eyes against the bright sky, letting his brain process that morning’s visit to the hearing clinic.

He had mixed feelings about his visit. The specialist he’d started seeing recently was a good one. Dr Singh didn’t talk to him like he was stupid or somehow incompetent just because his hearing had changed. She had dark, neat hair and shrewd eyes. On his first meeting with her a few weeks ago, she’d told him she disliked phrases like ‘hearing impairment’ and ‘disabled’ and ‘limitations’. She reminded him of Lydia, actually, with her brilliance and her no-nonsense attitude. 

The idea made him ache and remind himself to reply to Lydia’s email later. It had already been a few days  since he received it .  But his most recent migraine had hit him at the same time and put him  in a bad mood. He should probably text Scott back too. They hadn’t been in each other’s pockets, not since they all got their own careers but they cared, they  would text or  Skype often enough. That  had nosedived a little after his accident but he’d been better recently. Just the odd ‘off’ days as Singh called them.

_ “You mustn’t think of these as setbacks, Stiles. Don’t be disheartened. When we are stressed for long periods of time, we can become imbalanced or out of equilibrium. In some people, this can cause their tinnitus to seem louder on some days more than others. Keep an eye on it and please call me if it feels like it’s getting progressively worse, but if it’s the odd day or two, don’t beat yourself up over it. We all have good days and bad days. Can you tell me what happened this time? Last time we spoke, you said you felt an improvement in your general hearing, if not the tinnitus itself?” _

Stiles let his hand drift down to stroke over Grey’s fur, feeling her melt into a furry cat puddle on top of him, warm and vibrating slightly with her purring. He had felt his hearing had improved somewhat. It didn’t sound like listening to things underwater. He could hear words clearly most of the time. They could be a little tinny and on some days the ringing in his head was louder than others, but if his dad mumbled or someone at the grocery store muttered his total with their head averted as they inwardly lamented their long shift, he could more often than not hear it.

_ “My general hearing, yeah I guess. It’s not like trying to hear through water. But the ringing gets worse sometimes and then the migraines flare up and…” _ His words had faltered then as he’d thought about Derek soundlessly coming into his room, placing a hand on the back of his neck, cool and reassuring where he was tensed and blazing hot, drawing away his pain until he passed out from the relief. And like a true gentleman, Derek never mentioned it. 

_ “And can you give me an example of when the tinnitus gets worse, perhaps a location or particular stressful part of your life that seems to trigger it?” _ Singh had asked, without pressing him when he’d taken a moment longer to reply.

It felt like a weakness to him, admitting he had troubling handling perfectly normal things. He didn’t know if that was down to pride or the simple fact that he’d spent a large portion of his life having to take care of himself.

_ “So…I’ve noticed that a few times now, after I’ve been to the physio I have a flare up. My dad always says, once is an incident, two is a coincidence, three's a pattern.”  _

_ “You attend the physiotherapist in this hospital, correct?”  _ Singh had asked. When Stiles had nodded, she’d looked unsurprised.  _ “The atmosphere can be triggering. I’ve seen it in some of my clients with similar situations to yours _ .”

Always clients, never patients.

_ “There are a lot of potentially irritating sounds. I’d ask them about their home visits if that’s an affordable option to you – or even look at another smaller clinic. I don’t deny they are good at what they do down there, the best, but it isn’t necessarily  _ _ the right _ _ set up for some of your other needs.” _

She’d reached for something then, something that had instantly set Stiles on the defence and he had no idea why even now.

_ “These are still in the experimental stage but some of my other clients with similar experiences to you have found them very helpful. They may not help at all, but if you’d like to try, you may find they really help.” _ They had looked like expensive, moulded silicone earphones but with any wires attached and when Singh had passed them to him, they’d felt soft, lightweight and squishy.

They now sat in their case on top of his wallet, the keys to Derek’s truck and his cellphone by the door to the cattery. He glared at them as his mind reeled, thinking and overthinking. He was still glaring at the small box when Derek opened the mesh door of the cattery a little while later.

“She’s taken a real shine to you,” Derek mused with an open, bright look on his face. He scooped up the kitten that had started loping around the entrance, just in case he made a dash for it. The kittens were due to be picked up tomorrow by their adoptee so it probably wouldn’t be good if they made a run for it and got lost the day before. 

“I’m thinking about ordering one of those special cat brushes and testing the limits of our friendship,” Stiles offered in reply, scratching Grey’s nape gently and feeling her purr. 

The sunlight caught Derek as he stepped closer, letting the kitten scamper back off toward its sibling. As it did so, however, it tripped over Stiles’s little pile of belongings. Derek picked them up on his way over and for some reason Stiles felt weird, seeing him hold them.

“You’ve spent a lot of time sitting with her, earning her trust,” Derek said. Then he looked down at what he held in his hands as he came to stand beside Stiles. He frowned, then met Stiles’s gaze, obviously confused. “What’s this?”

Something in Stiles squirmed with uncertainty, something torn between embarrassment and awkwardness in his stomach, even though he knew it was ridiculous. There was nothing shameful about potentially needing equipment if you had any kind of impairment or disability. Of course there wasn’t. So why did it feel weird to try Singh’s experimental technology and maybe find he needed something to hear properly? Guilt turned the squirming sensation into acid in his stomach, clenching tight and angry at himself for thinking it.

Did it make people who wore actual hearing aids any weaker or incapable just because they wore them? Of course not. So why did the idea make him feel so strange?

He slowly sat up, cupping Grey to his chest so she slid gradually down into his lap. She smacked her lips in annoyance but curled up there grudgingly all the same, even as she gave him the stink eye. Stiles stared down at her, avoiding Derek’s gaze for reasons unknown to him.

“They’re sort of specialised ear-inserts,” he said, glancing up tentatively from under his lashes to see Derek examining them. When Derek caught his gaze, Stiles shrugged. “Something the clinic asked me to try, just to see if it helps. It’s an experimental research thing but Dr . Singh thinks I might benefit  from it. It’s like…some sort of in-ear waveguide or something. She said it channels sound differently through your ear. It wasn’t designed for use by people with my… well people like me. But apparently some people have found  that it helped improve the quality of sounds.”

Derek’s brows remained pinched together. “But tinnitus comes from inside the brain,” he said. 

Stiles’s stomach jerked at the sound of that word on Derek’s tongue. Derek was always so good about never mentioning it, even though he’d done so much to help make Stiles’s life as bearable as possible – more than bearable, really. Derek never mentioned the pain-drain or the music playing or even Stiles’s messed up shoulder. It was an unspoken understanding between them, something Derek just seemed to accept as given, as much of a part of Stiles as his need for oxygen or his preference for  the chocolate Pop Tarts instead of strawberry. It was like none of it mattered to him.

Stiles’s lips moved soundlessly for a moment, reeling from the surprise of hearing Derek say that word  _ and  _ have knowledge of the science of the affliction. Eventually he managed to scrounge together a reply.

“That’s part of the research. They still don’t exactly know why or how it helps some people and not others. Singh said something about them reducing stress caused by irritating sounds on damaged senses or something. I haven’t really decided if I want to try them.”

Turning the box over in his hand to look at them, Derek met Stiles’s gaze again. “Are there any potential dangers or risks to them?”

“Not really,” Stiles said, feeling stupid now because how could he explain to Derek why he was reluctant? “I just haven’t decided, that’s all.”

There was a long moment of silence, then Derek set the small pile of things down beside Stiles. To Stiles’s surprise, he also lowered himself to the grass beside him. Instead of looking at him, Derek looked out through the mesh walls of the cattery enclosure that Stiles fondly called ‘the catio’ just to see Derek rankle. The opposite end of the cattery was tucked into a couple of trees by the side of the barn to keep a  sheltered area at all times, but from the front there was a long view across the trees around the property, through which you could just glimpse the lake  that Stiles and his dad visited sometimes. It was relaxing, like something out of a dream to sit there beside Derek and stare at it as the morning waned into afternoon, so much so that he felt a little dazed when Derek spoke to him again.

“Surely anything is worth trying? What can it hurt?”

Stiles couldn’t answer that, and betray his completely unfounded concerns and apprehensions. Instead he blurted, “it’s getting a bit better.” When Derek just looked confused, he continued. “I mean, you know, my…” He gestured to his ears. “Not  _ better  _ better, just… Okay, when I first woke up that day in the hospital it was like I was hearing things from underwater. There was this…pulsing humming noise, like when you’re too close to a wind farm? And then along with that there was this constant ringing whine, a bit like fluorescent lighting but louder, you know? And if I wasn’t watching your face it could be hard to pick your exact words out through all that but lately it’s…it’s easier, like…the wind turbine sound is barely there. But…well the ringing is always there, just…” he bit his lip. “It sounds so stupid to say I’ve gotten used to it. I haven’t gotten used to it, just I’ve adjusted or…I don’t even…”

With a heavy sigh, Stiles flopped back down onto the grass, making Grey grumble and stretch before loping off toward a less mobile resting spot. If Stiles wasn’t there, her preferred perch was the little hammock stretching across the decking area. Yep, Stiles was rooming with a guy with a murderous glare that made catteries cosy, hand-reared fox babies and let chickens peck food from his bare hands. 

He was so gone on him it wasn’t even funny and now he was…what? Embarrassed that he might have to wear something that looked like a hearing aid just so he might be able to go to the supermarket without getting a headache? 

The sun was starting to duck behind some grey looking clouds that were much more seasonable for the time of year and he stared up at the shapes they made as he struggled to find words. 

“Why didn’t you tell me your hearing was getting better?” Derek asked. “Surely that’s a good thing?”

Stiles let out a growl of frustration and pushed himself upright again. “Because I like that you’re normal with me. That we don’t have to mention it. That you don’t pressure me to be okay or…whatever. You look at me and you don’t see the accident. You treat me the same as you always have, only it’s more and you get under my skin.  Y ou pay attention to what I need but you never press me about it, like I’m a broken thing that needs fixing or some animal that needs to be bandaged up and  find a new place in the world.” He was breathing hard when he finished his rant and he felt his skin burning, more because of what his words might reveal if Derek read between the lines. 

Those hazel green eyes just burned into him, studying him in silence for so long that Stiles swore his flush had spread down his throat to cover him entirely. Derek wasn’t just more at ease with himself, with the world, he was more aware too and Stiles felt raw and exposed under his gaze.

“So…your basic hearing has improved, but the tinnitus hasn’t, that’s why your doctor has recommended those earplug things?” Derek asked, obviously trying hard to understand.

Stiles wasn’t sure he could explain to him what the issue was when he didn’t get it himself, not entirely. “They aren’t earplugs, they’re like…” He cut himself off, because was that really the part that mattered?

He pulled his knees up to his chest like they could protect him, resting his arms over his knees and letting his chin fall on top. He stared hard at the trees ahead that had apparently helped calm the inner demons that had driven Derek from Beacon Hills. 

“My basic hearing…it’s not like one hundred percent,” he eventually said, voice soft and quiet. “They think it may improve even more but it’s something that can’t really be guessed at. And the longer it goes on, the less likely it’ll improve any further. The tinnitus much the same, it’ll always be there. It will never go away, same with the migraines and stuff that they bring on. But Singh thinks there are things they can do to help manage it.”

He  _ felt  _ Derek turn his head to look at him, perhaps out of habit, from ensuring Stiles could hear him clearly in the last couple of months. 

“You told me you liked Singh.”

Stiles met his eyes then, because it just felt like an odd thing to say. “Yes,” he confirmed hesitantly. 

“You trust her?”

Stiles didn’t answer but it must’ve been evident from his expression because Derek gave a little shrug, like it was a no-brainer. “So if she thinks something is worth trying, try it. If it has no risks, no harm done, you can try something else.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Stiles began, but Derek cut him off.

“I spent a lot of my life getting in my own way, Stiles, for reasons that didn’t even always make sense.”

Stiles frowned then. “What does that mean?”

Derek’s face looked tight, frustrated as if he were struggling to find the right words. “It means I don’t want you to avoid trying something that could help you for reasons that don’t matter.”

Stiles licked his lips absently, trying to figure this out. “Is that why you let Dad bring me here? To stop me from getting in my own way?”

That confused look crossed Derek’s face again. “You’re pack, Stiles, that’s why you’re here.” He said it like it was obvious, but Stiles felt like he’d been punched in the gut. It made sense, Perranwell Bay had the closest hospital with the best care for his needs and they were pack. Derek would’ve done the same for Scott or the others too. He would’ve shared his evenings with them and let them work beside him, let them integrate into his world. Slip into their room in the dead of night to drain their pain with a touch that felt intimate somehow in the quiet hours, a clandestine touch never spoken of in the daylight.

That was something that bothered Stiles too, the thought that his stay here, the place Derek had made for him, it could’ve been filled by anyone. And on top of that, maybe if Stiles was better, he wouldn’t be welcome anymore. Just like the wild animals Derek rehabilitated and released. Some of the domesticated animals stayed, like the rescue chickens and the ducks and a few of the stray cats that roamed the territory. But he didn’t want to be a stray that came to eat off the porch, or a rescue project with nowhere else to go. He didn’t want to be released either.

But that wasn’t what Derek had been getting at before. Stiles knew what he meant. He dragged a hand through his hair, ducked his head slightly as he did so, breathing out a huge sigh before looking back out across the grass again as the sun slipped fully behind a wide expanse of cloud. It wouldn’t be back out again for the rest of the day by the look of things, not if the grey clouds were anything to go by.

“If I wear them, I’ll feel like I’m wearing a hearing aid,” Stiles  admitted grudgingly. “And I know how offensive that sounds and that’s not…” He exhaled sharply through his nose with frustration. “I’m saying everything wrong. I  _ know  _ there’s nothing wrong with that. With using what you need. Nothing wrong with hearing loss or absence or whatever the proper name for it is.”

He felt like he was drowning trying to tread water at the deep end of a world he’d never really known much about before, forced to try and understand it even as he tried to gasp for air.

“I just don’t want someone to see them,  and see me and make a judgement, or give me pity or treat me differently because of what happened to me. I just want to be Stiles.”

“Well, I’ve seen Stiles come back from worse things than this,” Derek said, with such conviction that Stiles couldn’t help but let his eyes be drawn to him. His expression was tense with conviction. “And Stiles never let what other people thought of him stop him.”

“I’m still just figuring out who Stiles is now, after everything,” Stiles sighed heavily. “I don’t know who he is anymore. I just don’t want him to be looked at and assessed based on my limitations.”

Derek’s gaze was intense then. As they’d spoken he’d been leaning back on one arm, the other resting over his raised knee as the other curled under him. Now he sat up, looking Stiles straight in the eyes, leaning in slightly so Stiles couldn’t duck his head and look away. Stiles was mesmerised by the belief he saw there, mesmerised and baffled and so, so lost in him.

“You’re still the same Stiles who made a handful of mountain ash cross thirty yards because he believed he could do anything.” He said it with a tone of awe, like he’d said ‘I believe you can do anything’ and Stiles didn’t think he’d ever felt more exposed.

“All your life , people have underestimated you, Stiles, supernatural and human alike. Myself included. You’ve always proved people wrong. Don’t let this be any different.”

It was Stiles’s turn to search his face then, because while Derek had always been sort of withdrawn and kept his cards close to his chest, Stiles had been able to see through him , more often than not. But he didn’t understand what he saw in those eyes now – partly  perhaps because he was afraid to.

Derek picked up the little box again and set it firmly into Stiles’s hands. “Try them,” he said firmly, “or not. But don’t decide against them because the world is filled with people who will try and slap limitations on you because they see a hearing condition or disability as inability.”

Stiles felt a little dazed. Derek didn’t say much, not really, not unless they were bickering or sharing banter or talking about the animals or whatever was on the TV, but somewhere along the line, Derek had figured out exactly what he needed to hear. He felt a little giddy with it, with the relief of someone finally putting their finger on it and making it clear to him that this, this right here is what was holding him back.

His eyes stung and he blinked hard.

Derek leaned back then, giving him his space, turning his gaze outward once more. In the breathing room this gave Stiles, he felt himself relax where he sat, even as he curled his fingers around the little case containing the earbuds.

He was so high from his proximity, emboldened by Derek’s blind faith in him that he couldn’t stop himself. “How  much  better do I have to be before you kick me to the curb?”

There was that confused look again, that tightly drawn brow that was slightly arched and the slight tilt to his head like he was trying to figure Stiles out and another angle might help.

“This is your home, Stiles, for as long as you want it to be.”

Then, just because Stiles had always been the kind of kid to push things when he shouldn’t, to pick at the scab before it could fully heal, his mouth moved, almost without his permission. “Would that unlimited offer still apply if it’d been Scott or one of the others here instead of me?”

Derek tensed.

Stiles always had been able to surprise him, he supposed. He wasn’t sure if he was glad for that or not as he waited the long, silent breaths between his question and Derek’s answer.

“I’m still a part of the pack, even way out here, same as you. I’ll always be there if they need me, and there will always be a room here for them if they need it.”

Stiles nodded, it made sense. He dragged his thumb over his lower lip as Derek’s words sank in. But then Derek’s voice, soft and warm, kept going. 

“But there aren’t many people I’d want to permanently rearrange my life for.”

Stiles turned his head slowly, as if not daring to believe his ears, because surely he’d misheard. Derek wasn’t looking at him now, was looking straight ahead once more, but there was an awkward, stilted tension to his body, the kind that Stiles had only witnessed in him as a result of talking about his own thoughts and emotions. 

He felt a little quivering jolt in his chest where his breath got stuck, fluttery and frantic but so far away from panic it was in another realm of sensation. If he’d learned anything in all their years of fighting with each other and side by side, of saving each other and checking in on each other, it was how to read Derek Hale.

Even if neither of them had the words to examine it any further right then, it was enough to know he wasn’t alone in what he felt.

*

Neither of them were exactly connoisseurs in the kitchen, but they’d both lived on their own long enough to manage the essentials. Lately they’d started taking turns making the meals, but whoever cooked, they both ended up at the sink washing and  drying together. Derek had made a Tikka Masala that night, made meaning he’d poured the store-bought sauce over the chicken but it’d still tasted delicious, rice and all, so Stiles was washing while Derek dried and stacked the plates in the cupboards after himself. 

Derek was really meticulous about not being able to rest until the kitchen was spotless after dinner, which was one of the really cute hang-ups that Stiles had discovered since he’d started living with him. It felt nice, private, like a stupid, inconsequential secret that no one else knew because Stiles was the only one that’d shared space with him like this. Except for maybe Cora. Cora who had actually video called Derek earlier and seemed both surprised and knowing when she realised Stiles was still there.

If the way Derek had soon after that taken his call into the other room was an indication for something telling, Stiles tried not to think about it too much. He got a little light-headed and breathy whenever he let his mind wander down that path and it never seemed the right moment to let himself get into it with Derek. It wasn’t something you could just spring on the guy sharing your space. It had to be right.

Standing next to Derek, feeling his broad shoulders bump into him as they both stood by the sink, feeling his presence and the warmth his body gave off, his head spinning, that was not the right time.

“It’s the full moon tomorrow night,” Derek said as he wiped down the last glass Stiles had cleaned before setting it in the cupboard.

“Hmm?” Stiles asked, snapping back from the reverie he’d slipped into as he wiped down the sink and the counter the way Mr Meticulous preferred.

“I like to run, usually. I don’t…I’m in control, you know I am, but it feels…it’s how I blow off steam. And it’s safe to shift here. Helps keep the predators away if I do it regularly, actually.”

Stiles wondered for a moment why Derek was telling him this, why he seemed a little on edge about it, more anxious than Stiles had ever seen him – that was usually his place after all, not Derek’s. He wondered if Derek  had sensed the same reciprocation as him and that was making him antsy. That may have been part of why he was so agitated, uncharacteristically so, but it suddenly clicked in Stiles’s brain why Derek had mentioned tomorrow night in particular.

Stiles had been there for a few months now, but he’d only recently started sharing his full evenings with Derek. He’d never had to be informed about his monthly routine before because he’d always slip away into his room after too long.  But lately they sat together every night until they turned in.

“Ah, sure. Right,” he said, glad for the consideration.

“I usually shift right on the porch and come back just before dawn.”

Stiles couldn’t help himself. “So if I hear any howling I shouldn’t worry? Will you claw at the door to be let in?”

Derek scowled but that familiar light of amusement was in his eyes again. “I will shift back and let myself in, thanks.”

“We could always have a doggy door fitted?”

“If you start making toilet training jokes Stiles, I will honest to god–”

Whatever threat he’d been thinking up, it was lost when Stiles gave a delighted cackle.

*

It wasn’t until the next evening that Stiles found out exactly what Derek had meant by warning him about his full moon activities. Served him right really, for using humour as a defence and not taking a moment to think about it. 

They’ d settled the animals for the night. Little Stiles was fully weaned now so he didn’t require constant care. He  now lived in an outdoor enclosure away from where Derek kept the domestic animals. They’d only handled him to feed him but Stiles had to say he’d gotten attached to the little guy. He wasn’t going to miss helping him defecate though, he really could’ve gone all his life without knowing really young baby foxes needed help in that area. He shuddered. The cub was due to be moved onto another rehabilitation/rescue unit out of  the area, since they had some cubs the same age that Little Stiles could be housed with as a social group until he was ready to be reintroduced to the wild.

He felt like he’d bonded , in some way or another , to all the animals he’d helped Derek with in the last month or so since he’d started venturing outside his room. But most were always set to move on and that was bittersweet but also one of the best feelings. Setting something free, the way it was meant to live. Some, however, like the chickens, ducks, a couple of the horses and donkeys, they’d likely spend the rest of their days here, in the place they’d been given their second chance, the place they’d been given time and space to heal and recover themselves.

Stiles sipped his soda, staring out the kitchen window in the empty house, not long after Derek had vanished into the night. The sun had dipped below the horizon, the last sweeping cover of purple red just  painting the sky above the treeline. It wasn’t a bad place to start again, he thought ruefully. He totally got it.

Derek had started again here, after a long time of just travelling the world with Cora, never settling down. This place, this job had called to him. He remembered it’d been over several random phone calls and texts that Derek had told him what he was doing with himself up here, like he’d been reluctant to share it. Perhaps because of what Stiles and the others might think, or perhaps because he didn’t want people in this peaceful space he’d made for himself.

Stiles had told him then what he thought, that it was pretty perfect. He’d meant it. What he didn’t say was that he understood it too. In order for Derek to let go of his anger, his guilt, his loss, he was helping to rehabilitate creatures that felt just as scared and lost as maybe Derek had felt once.

Derek helped, and yet didn’t have to lose himself into the violence that  saved lives in the most obvious ways often required. This was subtle, hard work but of a kind that required patience and quiet. It was perfect. Stiles felt honoured to help him with that, to be invited into this sanctuary to help Derek, to share the place that no one else besides Cora had been invited into.

He tried not to let himself get too far ahead with that thought. There had been that moment the day before, in the cattery, and there had been the evenings before now, the easy, gently bickering domesticity between them. There had been something between them for some time before then too, he supposed. 

Now, with Derek out for the night, Stiles felt his loss keenly, even though he was someone who’d always been comfortable with his own company. Shaking off his thoughts before they drifted too deeply, he took the rest of his soda to his laptop on the sofa in front of the TV and settled down to Skype Scott, Lydia and Malia on their scheduled group call. They had  done this  a few in the last weeks and it felt good to get back into  a bit of a  routine with contacting people. He’d been emailing his work colleagues too back and forth but their conversation was sparing, especially since a lot of theirs seemed to be asking what he was going to do next and really, he just didn’t know. Not yet  and he wasn’t ready to think about it. Not tonight, not when he felt like he was in a good place.

He hadn’t tried the ear waveguide things yet. He’d gotten up that morning and looked at the box on his dresser, considered them and in the end hadn’t done it. As the night waned however and he wrapped up his call with the guys, he headed back to his room and considered them again. He picked up the seemingly harmless box and traced the corners, opening the lid to pick one up and squeeze it experimentally. It was super soft and so small, like replacement earphone caps only more shaped. The pale peach colour made them look really odd. 

Mind busy, he set it back in the case, staring at them for a long moment before heading back into the living room to shut off the TV. It was on the way back through the hall though, that it suddenly hit him why Derek had warned him about his full-moon routine. The front door opened, letting the porchlight stream into the dark hall, highlighting Derek’s silhouette where he stood on the threshold. Naked. His eyes were blazing supernatural blue in the low light and even from where he stood, Stiles could see him sweaty, mussed up, clothes hanging from his hands, as if he’d been intending to just slip into the shower.

Derek had warned him because he shifted back from his wolf form out on the porch. Naked.

Stiles’s brain was sort of stuck on that last part.  Naked.

Derek was out of breath, as if he’d been running this whole time  but as he stepped forward, Stiles could tell he was still worked up. He looked  slightly wary though, his steps tentative if unsure.  But Stiles had never been more sure of anything in his entire life. He surged forward, seizing Derek’s face and crashing their mouths together. He heard the low, tinny thud as Derek dropped his clothes to the floor, the clunk of the belt in his jeans and then Derek’s arms snatched him up. His strength enveloped him, holding him so close and so tight, fingers knotting in Stiles’s shirt as if he feared Stiles would disappear or flee from the intensity of the heat between them.

Derek smelled of clean sweat, night air and trees and Stiles honest-to-god groaned into his mouth from the relief of inhaling him this deep, this close. Derek was so riled up from the moon, even after running for hours, kissing Stiles with frantic hunger. More mouth than tongue like Stiles liked it, their lips connecting and melding together firm and sweet until his whole body was singing with it.

He felt feverishly hot, gasping for air between kisses and Derek stopping to nuzzle up against his nose, his jaw, his cheek, his ears, breathing harshly as he scented him everywhere he could reach before diving in for his mouth again.

“Couldn’t run it off,” Derek breathed, husky and raw and open just for him, like it physically hurt not to be as close to him as possible but he had to make Stiles understand. “Couldn’t stop thinking about you, just wanted…wanted to touch, wanted…” He sounded almost hurt from his desperation, like it was making him panicked, starving and emotional all at once and he both hated and loved it. He sounded, looked and felt like a man spinning out, dropping down and down no matter how tightly he clung on.

It was so unexpected from a man Stiles knew for a fact had had his share of lovers. But it struck him as Derek released his kiss-bruised lips to mouth at his throat, get his scent there and taste him all at once, it struck him that Derek hadn’t been with many people who knew he was a wolf ; had definitely never been with anyone he could trust one hundred percent. No one he could trust enough to let go and just be and not worry about the consequences. The realisation was more powerful than any drug and Stiles was soaring on it, on Derek.

“C’mere,” Stiles beckoned huskily, drawing Derek’s mouth back up to his but slower this time, gentler, a barely there caress and another, then another as he guided them backward into the nearest bedroom. Derek’s bedroom. 

A low rumbling growl vibrated in Derek’s chest, as if having Stiles in the place where Derek’s scent was strongest was the strongest aphrodisiac. Stiles made a mental note to ask him about it later as he slid his fingers into Derek’s sweat-dampened hair, cupping his head, caressing his neck. He gentled the riled wolf, slowing him down, so that by the time they tumbled to the bed, they stretched out together in slow, languorous passion.

Stiles toed off his socks and thanked god he’d worn a button-up because it was so much easier for his shoulder. Derek’s fingers came up to help him. He lay half over Stiles, naked and unwilling to relinquish his mouth. His hand stole inside Stiles’s shirt as soon as there was a big enough space in the fabric, leaving Stiles to finish unbuttoning it himself. Broad fingers splayed across his chest, dipping down to his stomach where he was knotted tight and as soon as Stiles leaned up to shrug awkwardly out of his shirt without breaking the kiss, Derek’s hand dipped lower and palmed him through his sweatpants.

A groan tore roughly from Stiles’s mouth, hand flying down to cover Derek’s out of reflex but not to push him away, only because it felt so good. When he twisted at the sensations flooding him,  he could feel  the soft bristles of  Derek's beard tickling,  his mouth wet and hot, steaming over Stiles’s skin. He could feel Derek tensing up again, speeding up as if he couldn’t contain it and this time, Stiles felt himself racing right alongside him.

He hooked his other arm around Derek’s neck, holding him close, pressing into his frenzied scenting with his own nose and mouth, breathing Derek in, grazing his lips against Derek’s jaw the way he’d been doing to him. He bit gently at Derek’s ear, trying to push him over onto his back but Derek pushed back, both of them tangling together without neglecting to kiss every part of the other they could reach.

Derek stroked him through his sweatpants more firmly and Stiles groaned into his ear, feeling Derek shudder in response. Stiles released Derek’s wrist but tightened his grip on Derek’s broad shoulders, tense and slippery with clean sweat. He tucked his head into his neck and rolled with the undulations of Derek’s hips as he wrapped his fingers around Derek’s cock.

Derek grunted and rocked into him until they were both grinding against each other. Somehow they managed to get Stiles’s pants and boxers down to somewhere between his calves, where he squirmed until he got them off between languid writhing jerks against each other. At some point Derek slid fully over him, grinding their erections together and their hips moved faster, more urgently, clumsily. Stiles released his cock to grasp Derek’s face with both hands, kissing his mouth fully again before letting his hands trail down Derek’s body. 

Derek let out a low sound, a heavy breath that was almost a growl and pinned Stiles hands either side of his head, as if he allowed Stiles to touch him he would lose it. It wasn’t high enough to strain his shoulder and Derek pressed just firmly enough to give him leverage to grind hard against Stiles, their erections leaking messily between them. But not enough to ease the slide.

Stiles squirmed at the dry frottage and friction but didn’t stop moving, didn’t do more than strain against Derek’s hold without really testing it, because it felt so good and tender at the same time. Stiles’s head spun at the sight of Derek’s body above him, face flushed, damp, defined muscles taut with tension and it was perfection and yet not enough at the same time.

The glorious man above him must’ve felt the same, and must’ve noted the dryness too because he ground into Stiles a final time before stretching across him, releasing his hands to dig out a bottle from the side drawer. Stiles watched with a detached sort of wonder as Derek let a messy, generous streak of clear, startlingly cool lubricant ooze down over both of their cocks and into a messy pool in Stiles’s stomach. He shuddered at the sensation, trying hard not to think too hard about Derek using the contents of that bottle to stroke himself alone in his bed. That was an idea for another time.

Before Derek could even finish setting the bottle aside, Stiles reached down, smearing the clear, scentless lubricant over their cocks together in one smooth grip, fisting them both until Derek’s thighs tensed either side of him. His cock wept pearly pre-come into Stiles hand, mixing with the lube as Stiles stroked and stroked until all he could smell was Derek.

He felt drunk on it and from Derek’s expression, raw, exposed and vulnerable yet feral at the same time, he was much the same. Just for him. Drunk on him. Them together. 

“How long has it been since someone touched you like this?” Stiles asked, free hand smoothing down his side, gripping his hip as they moved together into Stiles’s tight fist. 

“Never,” Derek panted, “never like this.”

In that instant Stiles knew what he wanted, what he thought Derek wanted too. Without slowing his stroking hand over both of their cocks, he reached back, and with fingers slick from the mess of lube pressed between Derek’s cheeks. The man above him shuddered, thighs tightening either side of Stiles again. Only this time, he rolled sideways, pulling Stiles with him.

They lay sprawled on their sides, facing each other on Derek’s now mussed sheets. Derek sought his mouth again, kissing him with a dominant passion that was at complete odds with the way the rest of his body surrendered. He just moved under the guidance of Stiles’s fist over his cock and pressure against his hole, just resting there, glancing over the tight ring of muscle with every twitch of their hips.

“Can I…?” Stiles began between kisses.

“Oh god, yes,” Derek groaned, kissing him once more before shifting fully onto his back. 

Stiles crowded up against his side, Derek half turned away so Stiles could grind slowly against the small of his back, the valley between his amazing ass. He tucked his head into Derek’s shoulder and felt Derek press against his temple, as if he just needed to be closer. He reached back, caressing Stiles’s shoulder, fingers absently tracing the gnarled scar tissue there. Stiles couldn’t really feel it, the nerves  were dead , the deeper tissues still healing, but he inhaled sharply regardless at the contact. Derek stroked over it without pause, like it was just another part of him and Stiles’s eyes glazed over. He was caught between the breathless heat spiralling from them and the overwhelming meaning of that touch. Acceptance, desire in spite of his scars, maybe a little bit because of them. Because he and Derek were both survivors, weren’t they?

“I don’t have condoms,” Stiles murmured, still  half  dazed. He tilted his head enough to meet Derek’s eyes, half-lidded and blown dark with arousal. 

“I don’t…I mean I haven’t needed them for a long time, I don’t usually…” Derek’s voice was low and hoarse , and as it trailed  off  Stiles realized Derek didn’t invite people back here and he hadn’t gone out looking for sex in long enough that he hadn’t bothered with condoms.

He bit his lip, watching Derek’s eyes track the motion. “Well I’m…I mean I usually carry them but I haven’t…”

“I get it if you’d rather not, but werewolves can’t carry anything so we don’t…we don’t need one. Not unless you’re worried about getting me pregnant,” Derek said, deadpan and Stiles’s mouth opened with a sarcastic remark but before he could find words, Derek added, “or…mess?”

Stiles thought he  _ heard  _ his own brain short-circuit. Then that was it, he was just hungry again. “Want mess, want to mess you up,” he mumbled almost nonsensically as he stole another kiss,  reaching blindly behind him for the bottle of lube Derek had discarded. His shoulder pinched and he winced, letting his upper body fall back to the bed to roll with the strain. He was good, he was okay. Totally not at all sexy, but definitely okay. He grasped the lube but when he rolled back to spoon up against Derek’s side again, Derek’s eyes were still blazing, like even Stiles’s spectacular  _ lack _ of finesse couldn’t even tame the flames. 

He’d only been in this position a few times, not literally, but it wasn’t something you forgot. And it wasn’t even remotely the same. Although he liked to think he was always careful and considerate, opening up some hook-up for your dick was nowhere near as intense as this. Circling his lube-slick fingertip over Derek’s entrance, over and over, flicking across its centre until Derek’s dick twitched and leaked. 

Derek eased his leg up, resting it over Stiles’s hip, opening himself up to Stiles’s touch just as Stiles slid in and Derek  _ squirmed _ . He turned his head to the side, away from Stiles, as if it was just too much and for that moment he just had to feel and breathe and nothing else. Stiles let him, watched him, felt him clench and relax around his finger. It was an awkward angle and it wasn’t his best shoulder either to test but he could make it work if he was careful. It was more a strain on the wrist anyway and he didn’t even care. He curled his finger lightly, just a little and Derek’s back arched, his spine visibly twitching and Stiles felt overheated just watching it, feeling it.

His own cock ached, his stomach tightened and he curled his finger again and again, sliding in and out with the movement until Derek was riding the movement of his hand. Stiles had to turn his hand a little to fight the strain, but it didn’t matter. When he slid in another finger he grazed the same spot that made Derek lose it with his knuckles and had to pull back, reach down and grasp himself tightly to cool himself down.

At that, Derek lifted his head, as if in question and Stiles gave a shaky little laugh. “I don’t think I’m gonna last.”

“Good,” Derek breathed, “then I won’t have to hold back.”

Stiles smeared the clear oily gel over his dick and stroked up and down through the tight globes of Derek’s ass. He guided himself to Derek’s hole and then spread his cheeks, relishing in the feel of muscle and skin under his hands, the prickle of Derek’s leg hair over his arm. He just slid into Derek like he was melting butter, except he was tight as well as soft there and so, so hot , Stiles had to pause for a second because his cock  was  so sensitive to the new heat. He let out a part groan, part laugh as he managed, “so werewolves really do run hot, huh?”

It was Derek’s turn to let out a breathy laugh, kissing Stiles as his brows furrowed. His face was flushed and so  _ affected _ , like Stiles had never seen before. Like he had never even come close to imagining in all his inappropriate fantasies.

He slid right into him like it was inevitable, like Derek was sucking him in and for a moment he just had to breathe, had to wait or risk self-combusting all over Derek’s room. He felt almost feverish. Tucking his head into Derek’s shoulder again, he let his hand slide around to stroke Derek’s hardness. It was like velvet-covered steel, wide but pulsing at his touch. He squeezed, stroked leisurely, feeling Derek sink back into him, slick and open. 

“You feel amazing,” Stiles managed, but Derek didn’t seem capable of words. This man, who always kept himself so closed off, now incapable of closing the doors he’d thrown open for Stiles. It was a heady feeling, someone that guarded themselves so closely, trusting you with everything they were, letting you inside where no one else had ever seen. He rocked back and forth without really withdrawing, letting Derek get a feel for him, stroking him slowly in time with the pulse of his hips.

Derek’s hand reached back, grasping his hip awkwardly, holding him in place as he moved his own hips forward, before sinking back onto Stiles in his own rhythm.

A thought came to Stiles unbidden, that maybe even if Derek had done this before, not many partners would see beyond his image and think maybe, just because he was strong, just because he was ripped didn’t mean he automatically wanted to be on top. 

_ “Never like this,”  _ Derek had said and Stiles realised. Never this open, never this completely gone or blissfully out of control and yet more sure than ever he’d be brought back down safely. Sure that his trust was reciprocated, that he wasn’t alone , and Stiles could relate. He let Derek’s erection go regretfully, sliding his hand over his stomach for better grip as he started to move with Derek,  fucking him deeper, a little faster. He knew he had it right when Derek’s eyes slid shut and his grip tightened on Stiles’s hip and he just rolled with it, rode Stiles’s thrusts, grinding his hips with little dips to get Stiles where he wanted him inside.

Stiles watched him and couldn’t help himself, he leaned in, licking up the side of Derek’s pectoral muscle, biting gently at his nipple. Derek shuddered, nuzzling at Stiles’s hairline, kissing and nipping and kissing again. Stiles didn’t even realise his hand was stroking absently over Derek’s stomach until Derek let out a moaning laugh. It was the most wonderful sound.

When Stiles lifted his head again , he could see all of Derek and it was perfect. He could see sinewy muscle tense and clench, dappled with sweat, see his stomach quivering and his heavy dick jerking in the air, slapping against his stomach with each movement. And this was it, this is how he’d known what they both wanted, needed. Derek was so much stronger than him, his powerful muscles were drawn taut from the intensity burning hotly between them. He could drag a tree up from its roots with his bare hands if he tried but here, with Stiles, he got to be soft as well.

Derek was undulating, lips parted around the guttural whines coming out of his throat, like he couldn’t help it, not when together they’d found the right dance to let Stiles grind deep over the place inside over and over. His hardness swelled thick and red, stomach flinching a little from the contact as if it was too much and not enough all at once. Derek shuddered and shook with it, lashes heavy on his cheeks as Stiles touched him and Stiles exhaled shakily at the sight.

“Can I…?” he asked, words slurred and almost lost to his ragged breathing. 

Derek nodded but even as he did, he reached down and wrapped his fingers around his own dick. Stiles watched as Derek let each punch of Stiles hips drive Derek’s cock through his own grip, just light enough to glance over every sensitive nerve ending, over and over, making Derek fuck his own fingers until he stiffened. He groaned through it, seizing up, just riding Stiles’s movements, his taut abdomen sucking in and shuddering as he came in long stripes over his fingers. 

He tightened so much inside Stiles could scarcely think much less move. He rocked hard into him, fucking him through it, making Derek jerk and shudder, a flush spreading across his chest from his face and neck, his neck that Stiles just pressed his face into and  _ moved _ .

He moved his hips until his thighs ached and his stomach muscles felt like they might snap like overstretched elastic and then he came. He felt like something burst with the force of it, sweeping through him as devastating as it was wonderful.

For a long while they could only lie there, breathing  heavily , bodies limp and sated,  and tangled together in a sticky mess. 

Of course, in the end, Derek was the first to move. Stiles grumbled about the ‘damned werewolf recovery period’ into the sheets as Derek headed into the ensuite. Stiles just had enough strength to watch his perfect rounded ass move as he went. 

He  dozed off a  little, so he wasn’t sure exactly how much time passed but he was sure it wasn’t long and yet Derek had obviously washed up. Stiles made a note to make a comment about fastidious post-mating habits of werewolves as soon as his brain worked again. Really, he thought it was just Derek’s need to take care of him without making a big deal of it as per usual. He couldn’t say he disliked it.

“Are you not even sore?” Stiles grumbled as Derek swept a damp washcloth over Stiles perfunctorily, before tossing it into the ensuite’s sink through the open door.

There was that high school basketball career rearing its head when the need arose.

Derek gave him a private smile as he crawled back into bed, tugging the blankets that’d been shoved to the end of the bed up over them. They lay facing each other this time, Derek’s broad fingers moving up slowly, appreciative and yet soothing over Stiles’s back. 

“Oh my god, your hands,” Stiles breathed sleepily. 

A low laugh dusted over his face.

“My hands?” Derek mused.

Stiles let his eyes flutter open, if only to glimpse the amused affection in Derek’s eyes, sparkling and beautiful under the light creeping in through the hallway.

“Yeah they’re like…big but really soft and like…capable, or something.”

He didn’t even tense as Derek’s hand smoothed over his scarred shoulder.

“It doesn’t hurt?” Derek asked softly.

Stiles shook his head a fraction.

“Feels good.” That was an understatement. But he couldn’t find the words to let Derek know what it meant to him. But he could see in Derek’s face what this, what they’d just shared meant to him, he knew Derek would understand without words. 

The feeling of those powerful arms wrapping around him made his body go completely lax. He felt thoroughly wrung dry in the most amazing way. He shifted a little, letting his head rest on Derek’s chest, letting the sound of his heart thudding mingle with the ever-present ringing in his head. 

Strong fingers carded through his sweaty hair, smoothing it back affectionately.

“Do you want me to put the music on so you can sleep?” Derek asked.

Stiles grumbled. “If you move I’ll rip your throat out – with my teeth.”

Derek’s chest jumped as he gave a small laugh and Stiles wrapped his arm over him. He was pretty sure after a workout like that even the sound of a stampede wouldn’t stop him from falling asleep.

“Derek,” he managed sleepily. A grunt was his only answer, signalling Derek wasn’t much further from sleep either. Finally released from the energy the full moon sent rushing through him.

“If you wanna roll me over in the morning and do things the other way around, I am giving you blanket permission, dude.”

Stiles swore he heard Derek roll his eyes and then Derek’s other arm came about to hold him close and still as they both drifted.


End file.
